Monarch Student^ XXXVIII Alexander

[BigTime]

Welcome everybody to the 38th edition of Monarch Student Prime! Our leader this week?



A ruthless warmonger as the AI, Alex had a unitprob of 35 and is very aggressive. In our hands? A great war leader. Aggressive is always nice for the better promoted troops and for early rushes, and philosophical allows him to get early research going and lets him pump out GPs to tech while he wars. Pretty well rounded leader, not much else to say.

His UU is the Phalanx:



An axeman replacement that gets a defense bonus against chariots. It's a great replacement for an already great rush unit. The only real counter to axes in a rush are chariots, and this allows the axes to not get picked off in the field while marching to the next city. And when chariots are in cities, they are usually garbage defenders anyway. Pretty solid UU.

His UB is the Odeon:



A colosseum replacement that provides even more happy than a normal colosseum. What's not to love. It also provide a strange +1 happy from Hit Singles late game, which can help with late game war weariness.

The Start:



Pigs in the BFC along with rice if we move, along with a lot of floodplains. Solid start with some nice early commerce from the FPs.

Fractal map again.

Huts and Events are OFF, add events in the custom scenario if you wish. (just make sure to cover the top part with your hand so you don't see the AIs )

And a cut-and-paste from Meatbuster's Monarch Student games:

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/or events.

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

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

For Monarch+ players please try to add archery back to the barbs in WB. If you don't, AIs will capture cities with archers very early in the game, which is no fun. If you prefer easymode barbs, that's fine too, just don't go wondering why an AI captured a barb city in the very early BCs!

 

[NetGear]

I prefer pericles as greeks but alex is great too. Can't wait to get off work now.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

I prefer pericles as greeks but alex is great too. Can't wait to get off work now.

I agree, Creative is head over heels better than Aggressive.

 

[NetGear]

Emperor/Normal

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346491/
Our leader is Colin Farrell. Apparently he knows how to build archers at turn 1 because I accidentally gave myself archery, and not the barbs. I rectify that after not realizing that for while. Hopefully that didnt affect the barbs at all

Spoiler :

Moved my scout and got this.

Groan. I was thinking about moving 1W and grabbing rice too, but now it got me wanting to go NW to grab elephants as well. That was probably too greedy.

grabbing rice turned out to be a bad idea imo. I realized it immediately after couple of turns. why have to research agri and work unirrigated rice when i can work FPs? It's alright tho... I'll just keep playing as is. But thought I'd share for anyone considering it.

Spoiler :

besides rice tile is more suited for a citysite with marble in it. There's also 2 stones nearby, NE and NW. Pericles as leader would have definitely made it interesting and be more appropriate for peaceful wonder style of play. I plan to play alex's style and heavily warmonger tho. There is horse to the south which is nice, but as for copper, there is one to the east near spain which is not far from our grasp. i prefer calvary, but i once again I want to play to alex's style so I'm probably gonna grab the copper and make izzy be the first to go.

As for north, Theres tons of nice expanding room with jungle to cover us from AI expansion for the time being. Its looking pretty good.

 

[Mantic0re]

anyone thinking of something other than settling 1W?

 

[NihilZero]

anyone thinking of something other than settling 1W?

It's only an unirrigated rice, not in itself worth moving for since you risk losing something else hidden in the fog or an unrevealed strategic resource. A farmed floodplain is stronger than a dry rice (even if it does take ages to improve).

 

[vranasm]

hmm yeah that ignoring rice thing makes sense.
What about settling 1N? gets another GH and is not settled on fp.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Alex unitprob is 35, not 40.

I'm doing a let's play of this, first episode begins uploading around 5 AM and 1/day after that. Should be viewable around 7am USEast unless youtube decides to drop a deuce on it.

Immortal/Quick .

 

[FlyingSwan]

@meinteam.I best get this game finished quick before I watch that.Liked the Stalin LP,nicely pragmatically done.Up until the end of the 2nd vid I thought you were going for AP diplo win for sure.

 

[NihilZero]

Immortal/Quick .

I didn't think anybody played on quick. I'll have to check it out to see what Quick looks like.

 

[stimpyhoek]

Spoiler :

Had to rename character to remind my self to farm everything. Never done it before, gonna see how pure philo cuts it. Will tech constitution. So far I grabbed gold of issy and put oracle in town, its got schwedagon in a turn too. Schwedagon for fast philo. G lib and parthenon for ramping it up. Yep Im going philo mental this game I got buddhism so we r sweet apart from Monty. Pissed me off with demand so I bribed Mansa on him(expensive tho) Only got 4 cities but theres space for fifty.... Best thing about farming flood plains is my cap is alredy size 13(pretty sure rep wont help with that till I get a few happy faces.)

 

[Mantic0re]

It's only an unirrigated rice, not in itself worth moving for since you risk losing something else hidden in the fog or an unrevealed strategic resource. A farmed floodplain is stronger than a dry rice (even if it does take ages to improve).

I didn't think about the rice at all. I simply hate settling on floodplains if I don't have to. The value of working the flood plain far exceeds the value of settling it. I don't really care where we move, but I'd really rather not settle ON the floodplain.

Is this thinking flawed at higher levels?

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Why does no one like the 1NW spot? You gain a FP and a bunch of hills, and dry Rice which can be split for another city later.

 

[NihilZero]

Thing is, there is usually at least three resources in the starting BFC. It's not clear from the opening position where two of these are and how many of them are unrevealed strategic resources (if any). At the very least we have to move the scout and try to eliminate some of the possibilities before we can consider moving.

 

[Kaosprophet]

Thing is, there is usually at least three resources in the starting BFC. It's not clear from the opening position where two of these are and how many of them are unrevealed strategic resources (if any). At the very least we have to move the scout and try to eliminate some of the possibilities before we can consider moving.

From what my limited fog-reading skills tell me, moving NW takes us off the following:

2 GrassForests, 2 floodplains, 1 plainshill, 1 plains, 1 grassland. I can't see a move from the scout that'll clarify any of those losses - if there's any resources lost to that move, they're unrevealed strategics. And IIRC, the game sometimes considers 4 FP tiles equivelant to 2 bonus resources, so there might be nothing.

We pick up:
1 forested plains, 2 grass-hills, 1 floodplains (the one we're not settling on), dry-rice and 2 unknowns, at least one of which is likely forested. (Other unknowns we keep either way.) Also a grassland and plains tile that (almost) certainly have nothing buried.

Moving the scout E-NE would reveal what's in those 4 unknowns (the two we'd pick up going NW + the 2 we get either way), but even if there's nothing of note we're still gambling on hiddens vs FP-subsitition on either move. So I'm guessing: move it southeast to see if we'd pick up anything worth moving the settler south-ish instead?

 

[NihilZero]

There are eight fogged BFC tiles. Four of these are unforested, but one of those is a floodplain. That leaves us with three mystery tiles: a grassland SSE of the settler, a grassland 2N of the settler, and a plains 2E1N. There could be fogged resources in any of these three.

The scout can move to reveal either one of the grassland tiles but he can't reveal the plains tile. Of these two tiles that can be revealed by the scout, the one 2N of the settler can be revealed by a single scout move E leaving him with one more move (maybe onto the hill beside him?). If you want to unfog the grassland SSE of the settler, you have to use both your scout moves by going 2SE.

My intuition is that even if you move the scout and learn nothing, SIP is still best as the dry rice sucks anyway and it's not worth risking losing something good to get it. But, part of the fun of civ is that there is often no single right answer and multiple approaches are possible.

 

[stimpyhoek]

Spoiler :

Turns out a philo econ is hell... Yep i cant do jack. Cant tech, cant afford troops, cant build an empire. perhaps mids r essential to this. Yep just fat lazy towns fighting obesity. Its 900ad and I fought a war against Monty. I never ever saw unit cost this high. Got peace but it doesnt matter coz i cant do anything anyway. Will play to finish anyway but it is so painful...(got 8 towns)By 900ad Im normally ready to lib rifles but this time I just about got civil service. Sad experiment gone badly wrong.

 

[NihilZero]

I started playing on Immortal/Normal and forgot to give the barbs archery, lost a very important barb city I needed to capture really early as a result. Hence I am abandoning the game. Might try again, but I've spoiled the map for myself now. D'oh!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spoiler :

Turns out a philo econ is hell... Yep i cant do jack. Cant tech, cant afford troops, cant build an empire. perhaps mids r essential to this. Yep just fat lazy towns fighting obesity. Its 900ad and I fought a war against Monty. I never ever saw unit cost this high. Got peace but it doesnt matter coz i cant do anything anyway. Will play to finish anyway but it is so painful...(got 8 towns)By 900ad Im normally ready to lib rifles but this time I just about got civil service. Sad experiment gone badly wrong.

Mids are never essential for any trait. Sometimes, building them is your best play compared to alternatives, but there is absolutely no reason to struggle with PHI on any map where you have food...

I started playing on Immortal/Normal and forgot to give the barbs archery, lost a very important barb city I needed to capture really early as a result. Hence I am abandoning the game. Might try again, but I've spoiled the map for myself now. D'oh!

D'oh indeed . For a change I remembered to do this, but still didn't bother taking the barb city. I wonder if quick speed affected the timing/placement of it? I suppose my earlygame nonsense might have stuck a city somewhere and influenced that too . Wars are such hell on quick that I'll basically sell my civ's soul to grab cities peacefully so maybe that had something to do with it.

 

[MarigoldRan]

875 BC. Epic speed. Things are going well, going very well.

Started with the typical three-warrior opening. A scout and a warrior got eaten by a lion. But they did their job. Found the copper, the stone, the horse, the other civs, and stole two workers. Initial build order:

warrior, warrior, warrior, worker, settler, barracks, warrior, settler. Then more warriors, until copper was mined and connected to capital. Aggressive warriors are pretty sweet for dealing with barbs.

Tech order: Mining, Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, Wheel, Writing. Then started on Alphabet, but changed my mind and got Masonry first. Then returned back to Alphabet. Right now I'm getting currency because I have a crapload of cities (6 or 7?). I have the Great Wall, and is aiming for Pyramids. Have back-traded for all of the essential worker techs.

The only major problem with this build is that you capture and get a lot of workers, but they've got nothing to do except build roads until Alphabet is finished.

Probably going to continue onto elephants and catapults and take the rest of my continent. Also, I sent a workboat or two out to explore the rest of the map.

EDIT: Monarch is really easy after playing Immortal and Diety. The reason I like building warriors early on is because they're always useful. Also good to have backup in case of boo-boos. Of course sometimes the back-up dies too....

EDIT 2: Yeah, slavery. Oh boy. It's good.

EDIT 3: I've got A LOT of practice using warriors on Earth18. It's paying off. I'm surprised people don't recommend building warriors more often. They're a really good unit for their cost. At the least, you can use them to garrison interior cities for the entire game to keep the people inside happy. Furthermore, you can also do the warrior rush, worker nabbing, pillage for fun and pleasure, fight the barbs, escort service for workers and settlers, and explore and meet new peoples.

Besides, what else can you build that's productive at the beginning of the game and doesn't stop your city from growing?

I think warriors are becoming my favorite unit.