Monarch Student^ XXVII Hannibal

[Vaidd]

Liberalism in AD 960 (Monarch/standard):

Spoiler :

I saw Stevoh won via culture, and although I haven't looked at his spoiler yet, I considered whether I could give that a try. With the cities I was about to found and one barb city I was about to conquer, I would have 10 total, several of them good commerce cities. I thought I could give cultural a go.

The only thing that would stop me would be if someone else go Sistine Chapel first. Without marble, I figured I'd have to beeline music and build it ASAP, so that's what I did. If I didn't get it, then I'd just trade away the aesthetic-line techs and fall back on military conquest, which is always plan A. My beuracracy capital hammered out GL while I was at it, and then I chopped out Sistine.

Brennus threw a bit of a monkey wrench into my plans when he decided to dagger me in AD 175. I built defensive units in my other cities while continuing the wonders in my capital. He killed a few units, and it took me a while to get enough war success to make him go away.

Meanwhile, my research continued. After music (which I got first), I went after Lib. I was also first to Philo, so one of my riverside cottage cities is also the holy city of Taoism. About this time I popped a GS from the capital, so I bulbed most of Education. From there it was smooth sailing to Lib. I took Nationalism, since there wasn't anything more appealing on the menu.

I'm now about to revolt into HR (don't know why I wasn't in this already), Free Speech (2x culture), Caste (extra artists), and for now, Pacifism (extra GPP = extra Great Artists, and hopefully one GP for the shrine). I thought about FR, but I think I'll try to get some extra GAs first.

My only big decision now is how much more to tech, if any. Should I just crank up the culture slider and go for it, or maintain some research to keep military parity in case Bren wants to take another run at me? (Well, now that I look, I guess I need one more tech for sure--Drama--or I can't crank up the culture slider at all. ) It's currently turn 158, or AD 960.

 

[i_imperator]

@Vaidd

Spoiler :

Good job so far, especially defending from that attack. As for which tech should you research, i'd reccomend printing press after drama, in my game i reshearched up to cositution and switched into Rep.I think i could've turned research off at printing press and i would've gotten a faster victory. Also, you should build the taj, ( if you have marble, if not trade for it) and use the gloden age to starve some of your cities so you can force a GA out.

 

[BigTime]

Immortal/normal to 1872 Domination

Spoiler :

After taking Democracy from lib, and using a GA to revolt to US/FS/Eman, my tech rate soared. I beeline communism and took home the prize:

My favorite wonder in the game. I then use my enormous tech rate to get rifles + cannons to take over the continent. Williem's first, as I can keep Brennus at friendly while I fight him to prevent any backstabs.

We are at tech parity, but I win. Of course he spun off the southwest island as a colony and thanks to S!*@&!!* vassal mechanics he won't cap despite being deprived of all his mainland possesions. So I take some boats, but luckily Gilgamesh breaks free, allowing for a nice double cap.

Next up is Brennus, who is huge and gets MGs and Infantry while we are at war. Unit spam prevails:

Like Williem, I take all his mainland cities. Now it's time to say ello to the other continent. I tech out Combustion, Industrialism, and Flight for a naval-marine-fighter massacre. I notice something cute though,

Mr Mansa is sub 40 turns to the victory! I don't think so:

Only two cities taken. I bribed him to war against Pacal first with the $$$ and then went in for the backstab. As you can see in the tech screen he did have fission and built manhattan project But the bribe payed off as he nuked Pacal a bit before he could nuke me. By then he had already capped.

After that it was straight mop-up to the victory. Pacal and Sitting Bull did not have infantry, and Pacal as well was making a push for culture, albeit a weak one at that. I'll save you the pics but it was just a massacre, taking out his top 2 culture cities and a few others.

And to end it for the W, Sitting Bull was the final candidate. I actually took all but 2 of his cities, all his coastal cities, before I capped him. Reason being? He wouldn't TALK??!?! I'm pretty sure I'd want to talk when all but 2 of my cities were taken

But all is well as he caps:

Which pushes me over the limit

For the W

And to prove why the Kremlin is my favorite wonder:

Yeah, rushbuy is amazing.

K/D:

Most of the losses were when I was fighting Brennus's infantry with cannon and rifleman, as I lost a lot of rifles in the field and cannon at the city bombardment.

Pre-1900s Domination usually leads to a pretty good score.

Overall, this map was pretty easy with the large amount of land we get and the fact that it is easily cottagable, along with fairly easy diplo on the home island. I got a little surprise with Mansa pressing Pre-1900s culture, but easily taken care of with massed marines + fighters.

Marines + fighters must be the best way to fight intercontinental warfare. It's lightning fast and really easy to use. Just bombard with ships, attack with fighters, capture with marines.

The map showcases how if you don't expand fast, some AIs can get really powerful, as shown by Brennus in this map.

 

[Vaidd]

@stevoh

Spoiler :

There's no marble on the continent, and nobody has visited us from overseas yet, so that will be a little difficult. Still, I've got to have a monopoly on Nationalism, so it's probably worth a try.

 

[MikNuggetz]

I give this one a whirl, hopefully it turns out better for me than the last one, considering I vastly prefer Hannibal.
EDIT-didn't realize I was so late , ah well better late than never eh?

 

[Emperor_ofRome]

Space Race 1886 AD

Spoiler :

I continued down the tech tree, beelining Robotics for the space elevator since I was far ahead in tech at this point. Never used it before and thought I'd give it a shot.

Meanwhile Brennus decided to get out his aggression and declared on Willem. Turns out he had HUGE stacks and took two cities. Seeing my way into some more land I halted the war via AP palace, built some Mech Infantry and blitzed through Willems remaining cities.

From there it was smooth sailing until a few turns before I launched my ship. Brennus declares war on me, and I'm friendly with him! I wasn't too worried since I had left over Mechs vs his plain infantry and Cavalry though.

 

[huerfanista]

Emperor/normal, 1842 domination:

Spoiler :

Teched to AL/combustion/flight, then DOWed Pacal and capped him after 4 cities (being sure to leave all his border cities with Mansa to abuse the land target rule ). Then capped Mansa after taking 2 cities, and finally Bull with 3 cities.

 

[i_imperator]

@Vaidd

Spoiler :

I was able to get marble, but i think in your game, brennus might have it because i settled a city at the 2gold near brennus, so i guess your right, i doubt he'll trade it after that war. Try and meet the other civ's, see if they are willing to trade. You should be able to get the Taj so, but there are two civs on the other landmasses that love culture, so keep an eye on it (and don't forget about welliam, he usually goes for nat aswell.

 

[Vaidd]

@stevoh

Spoiler :

I stand corrected. Unfortunately, Brennus settled his second city right on the marble. I don't recall him ever offering the marble for trade, but that might also have been due to him DOWing again on the first turn I played this past set. No worries, though. I fought him off again, and built the Taj without marble. I got two great artists from that GA. I'll finish up this afternoon and post more details later.

 

[yanner39]

I started playing this one last night. I 'll to put the words together to describe what I've done.

I do have a question about the map. Was it modified in any way, to say, add more food or rivers, etc...I give the players full marks for their crushing victories, but I myself have never seen a map like this for a while. I usually play continents or fractal and the land isn't very forgiving.

Anyways, it just seems that these forum games have nice maps.

This is no way a criticism but just a question.

 

[BigTime]

I started playing this one last night. I 'll to put the words together to describe what I've done.

I do have a question about the map. Was it modified in any way, to say, add more food or rivers, etc...I give the players full marks for their crushing victories, but I myself have never seen a map like this for a while. I usually play continents or fractal and the land isn't very forgiving.

Anyways, it just seems that these forum games have nice maps.

This is no way a criticism but just a question.

Nope, just a standard hemispheres map. I just used the first start I generated. The only time I will do anything besides that is when I choose fractal so we are not isolated.

 

[yanner39]

Nope, just a standard hemispheres map. I just used the first start I generated. The only time I will do anything besides that is when I choose fractal so we are not isolated.

Thanks. I just found it funny that this is the first map I play in a long time where there is enough food to go around and settle 10 or 11 nice cities no problem. Does that have to do with a Hemisphere map?

 

[BigTime]

Thanks. I just found it funny that this is the first map I play in a long time where there is enough food to go around and settle 10 or 11 nice cities no problem. Does that have to do with a Hemisphere map?

I don't think so... As far as I know, hemispheres is just continents with a little bit different landmass shapes, as well as sometimes some islands.

 

[Vaidd]

Cultural victory, AD 1848:

Spoiler :

After my last report, I failed to notice Brennus was in WHEOOHRN. I noticed when I resumed play last night, so I started to build a couple extra troops before revolting. Unfortunately, he declared the very next turn. Because I hadn't yet forced out my borders very far, he was able to get in and capture a city the turn after that. (One of my planned cultural cities, to boot. )

The 3rd turn of the war, I recaptured said city and set about rebuilding the 2 temples, library, and monastary I had lost. Ugh. I also traded Willie for Feudalism to get longbows. With a few upgraded CG archers and a fresh stack of swords and axes, I walled his next stack in the same city, after which he was willing to talk peace.

I finished teching Drama, then made my way up to printing press, as Stevoh advised. (Starting back at MC. ) After that, I ran the slider as high as my treasury would allow.

Right after the war, I popped a GS. I usually don't use them for golden ages, but he wouldn't have bulbed anything useful. I starved out a great artist in one of my non-cultural cities. I also went to work on the Taj Mahal. I figured I was first to nationalism, so even without marble (which Brennus wouldn't trade me), I stood a good chance. 45 turns later lol I got it. This time I used two secondary cities to get 1 GA from each.

So there were two questions: Cottages or farms? And settle the GAs or save for culture bombs?

Looking at the numbers, I figured that with the slider at at 80-90%, a village was like an artist specialist that fed itself (on grassland, of course), so I worked all my mature cottages. I farmed over a couple of brand-new cottages and any grassland tiles that hadn't yet been worked so I could run more specialists. Other cities ran merchants so I could keep the culture slider up.

Meanwhile, settling a GA would give me 14 per turn (and 3 , but I didn't care about that). A culture bomb is worth 4000 at standard. 4000/14 = 285 turns to break even. Even counting multipliers from free speech and cathedrals (which I hadn't built yet), it would still be about 90 turns. I didn't think I was going to be taking that long, so I saved them all.

I eventually got Brennus to pleased with resource trades, religion, and peace (well if you value peace that much, why did you declare twice?), which meant I only had to worry about overseas armies...if any of the other civs ever got around to exploring my continent, that is. Finally caravels starting showing up in AD 1560. MM, Pacal, and Washington all dropped by to say hello and trade maps. (SB apparently just sat. I had to go find him later on.) They all had astro pretty soon after, so I could trade resources for more GPT.

In 1845, Carthage went legendary. 3 turns after, I did the math and realized I could culture bomb my two other cities and push them over the top too. I might have saved a couple of turns if I had noticed that earlier, but I don't play computer games because I want to stop and do math every turn.

 

[i_imperator]

Congrats on the culture win Vaidd! GG.

 

[BigTime]

Vaidd, nice win. Next game do you think you could try using pictures in your writeup? It makes the writeup a lot more easy to read and nice, and gives the reader a visual description of how you settled, managed diplo, etc.

 

[Vaidd]

Vaidd, nice win. Next game do you think you could try using pictures in your writeup? It makes the writeup a lot more easy to read and nice, and gives the reader a visual description of how you settled, managed diplo, etc.

Thank you. I keep putting off signing up for an account with Imageshack, but I'll try to get that done before the next MS.

 

[vranasm]

@BigTime

I checked the WBsaves and there is one thing very confusing.
In Emperor save you added Hunting to AI's and in Immortal you gave AI's hunting and agriculture. I thought that correct way is Monarch ~ Emperor, Immortal gets hunting, Deity gets hunting and aggri.

 

[BigTime]

@BigTime

I checked the WBsaves and there is one thing very confusing.
In Emperor save you added Hunting to AI's and in Immortal you gave AI's hunting and agriculture. I thought that correct way is Monarch ~ Emperor, Immortal gets hunting, Deity gets hunting and aggri.

I've checked this before, and I've done it right.
Monarch AIs begin with archery.
Emperor AIs- hunting and archery.
Immortal AIs- hunting, archery, and agriculture.
Deity AIs- hunting, archery, agriculture, and the wheel.

Immortal AIs get a free worker and Deity AIs get a free settler and two free workers. All of these difficulties get free military units as well, I believe.

 

[vranasm]

I've checked this before, and I've done it right.
Monarch AIs begin with archery.
Emperor AIs- hunting and archery.
Immortal AIs- hunting, archery, and agriculture.
Deity AIs- hunting, archery, agriculture, and the wheel.

Immortal AIs get a free worker and Deity AIs get a free settler and two free workers. All of these difficulties get free military units as well, I believe.

well that could explain a thing or two about SE games I tried to run ;-)