Monarch Student^ XXXVIII Alexander

@MarigoldRan, that info should be in a spoiler.

I have a short break from study, so i'll give this a go, sigining in Immortal/Normal.
 
Spoiler :
Only up to 1200ad but since Im doing new thing thought I would report. So lousy start has turned around now. Still deficit at zero percent the WHOLE game but I think pure philo seems to push u that way. It was so awful at 800ad I was gonna quit. Just played for an hour and everything is different. Coz my tech was so bad I could trade with ai for feudal et al. Kept wars going around me. Game turned when I bulbed lib to get Nat. Used g engineer to build Taj and went straight for constitution. Almost tripled my beakers instantly. So in short pure philo opener seemed horrible but now Im so far ahead its untrue. Best part is when u get guilds so all the caste powered forges start working. :goodjob: My tech at zero percent is now faster than Mansa. Running about 30 specialists. When I get rep parts (3 turns)and make a million lumbermills this game is over.
 
How do you do spoilers?

When you go to post something, (not quick post) at the far right of the upper tool bar is this:

Spoiler :

Put your game info here!


I would say first that you maybe should have found out HOW to spoiler before posting on the thread where it is explicitly said on post #1 that you must spoiler your reports as not to ruin the game for the other people wanting to play.
 
Marigold, you can still go back and edit your posts and put spoiler tags around them. Please do when you get the chance, spoilers... well, spoil things.

Signing in on Emperor/Marathon. Haven't played properly in a while, so forgive me if I make silly/rookie mistakes in my game. D: Moreover, the plan is to run an SE since Alex is PHI, an economy I have little to no experience with. Wish me luck! :sad:

Quick question: does one farm FPs in the capital when running an SE, or is it better to cottage them so that you can run Bureaucracy? I've had a look around and gotten conflicting messages, so. :/

Spoiler :

Move my early scout SE twice to see if there's anything of note. There isn't, so I figure my best bet is to SIP and hope for the best. Looks like I'll only have Pigs as the only resource in my capital for now, judging from that, there should be at least one strategic resource in its BFC, no?

Scout around the southern tip of the continent and then start heading north. Meet Napoleon :)sad:) and Isabella :)sad::sad::sad::sad::sad:). Should be an interesting game!
 
I replayed this after my annoying mishap with forgetting to Achery up the barbs. Immortal/Normal to 25AD:

Spoiler :

Settled 1N gaining a hill and some riverside ivory (and a bonus plains wine). When you have opening techs as bad as Hunting and Fishing, it's worthwhile to settle near something you can actually improve. The wine when farmed gives a not-too-terrible 2/1/2. I go for a strange Agriculture -> AH opening to save beakers. Not completely sure if this is best, but I kow I want to farm a floodplain anyway since solitary hill pigs is not really enough food, so I might as well bite the bullet and do that before the pigs hoping that the beaker saving will compensate for the slow improving. With Greece, your main concern is often worker idlenes but I won't have any of that.

My first settler rushed for the stone and I built the GW since it's pretty barb friendly territory with all that ice down south and nobody very close.

I wanted to wonderspam and build everything with my PHI leader, but the AIs had other ideas. I did manange to add the Great Library and Pyramids, though. I settle all GPs early, even the Great Spy got settled to help research under rep. He still gave me enough EPs to dominate Izzy and steal a half-dozen techs or so.



The Pyramids finished in 675BC. As far as grabbing land was concerned, I had a couple of close calls. This whipped settler in the city narrowly beat Mansa's settler party
to the gold thanks to my road.



And I just got the the copper here in time. No other metal sources available as barbs settled my iron.



A couple of cottages go up early in the capital to fund my initial expansion, but it's fundamentally a settled super-spec capital.

Diplo wise, the religions break down as follows: Mansa founded Hinduism and converted Napoleon and Augustus. Monty is Buddhist and Isa Jewish. She's my only really close neighbour and spreads Judaism to my cities, so I convert when she asks.



Augustus, with only four cities, attacked Monty.



Here's my first five cities. Plans were underway to attack those barb settlements.


 
Continued in this post to allow for adequate screenshot space:
Spoiler :
After the initial expansion I find myself in a surprisingly strong position. The continent must be pretty cramped because nobody gets a high number of cities. I consider war with HAs or elephants against Mansa, Monty or Izzy, but three barb cities spawned right beside me meaning I still have space for continued (fairly) peaceful expansion once I take them out.



With Monty busy fighting Augustus and Izzy sharing my religion, I only have to worry about one serious threat. So I butter up Bonaparte with the trusty gift city routine.



Craptown is, of course, a desert city designed to create border tension with Spain.

Phalanxes captured and razed all the barb cities, allowing me to resettle in better locations and also unlock the HE.



Things unfold fairly predictably. Monty and Augustus fight interminably. Mansa eventually joins and uses his tech lead and war elephants to crush Monty into submission and caps him.



Napoleon attacks Isabella in 800AD. :D

My settled GSpy gives me enough to steal things like Compass, Contruction and Theology from Izzy.

I milk Mansa trades for cash primarily, rather than techs although I pick up a few of those too. Liberalism is won, Taj Mahal is built, Mansa wins Economics race, I start building Cuirassiers, yadda yadda.



On getting Lib I switcht to Free Religion, meaning I won't have much to worry aout diplo-wise (Izzy is no longer a threat to me).

Amusingly enough Napoleon manages to capture Cordoba but loses Craptown. I'm offended that he should be so careless with such a priceless gift. :lol:



I have an army now and it's time to knock out the only threat on the landmass. I ask for Napoleon to set up a little diversion since Mansa was strong enough to beat Monty.



Then I attack myself.



Ragnar shows up to inform me that he hates me and I'm his worst enemy. Well, I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance too, Ragnar.



He's got a scary ten cities placing him in equal first with me, meaning a massive number of units. He's already WHEOOHRN when I meet him so I assume he has designs on Augustus.

Mansa turns out to be a soft target and the war is pretty easy. Monty breaks away from him so I give him a peace treaty just to simplify matters. Then I wipe MM off the map.





By now Augustus has attacked his old nemesis Monty again. I declare and quickly kill off Monty since I want those cities myself.



I've nearly won now. It's just a matter of killing off a few more AIs. Attacking Augustus immediately is a good idea because: he has cuirassiers but no replaceable parts yet; his culture has not yet expanded to fill up the space left by the now ethnically cleansed Malinese and Aztec cultures; and his stack is in the open (well, in a forest) and is a little banged up.

So I go ahead and do that. Surprisingly he's willing to capitulate after losing one previously Aztec city and his stack in the forest. I kinda had my heart set on killing him off completely, but I guess even my cruel soul is not entirely impervious to his entreaties for mercy, so I let him live.



Obviously Napoleon is next. He gets swept with similar ease.



Sadly I couldn't kill him completely as it turned out that he had another mystery city somehwere and had no idea where it was. So I took peace from him in return for his world map.



So Bonaparte was banished to his island retreat of Elba in an eerie parallel of historical reality. This time there would be no comeback, however

Three guesses as to what I did next.



Before I finished Izzy my territory on the main landmass plus various overseas colonies gave me enough to win.



Shockingly easy map once thing got rolling for the following reason: there were six civs shoe-horned onto one continent. None of them had much land and I managed to dominate the city count on the continent. Ragnar with his ten cities never had any impact on world affairs.


 
"There is nothing impossible to him who will try."
-Alexander the Great

Up to 1AD:

Spoiler :
Things are bumbling along quite nicely thus far, and for a newbie attempt at an SE, I think I'm doing alright. With the tiles above my capital now revealed, 1N probably would've been a better settle, but oh well.

Early tech path goes Agriculture -> AH -> Mining, with Athens building Warrior, Worker, Warrior, Settler. The Worker pops one turn before AH finishes up, giving it time to move onto the hill pigs just as we become able to pasture them. I farm some of the Flood Plains in order to fuel early growth, since I figure I'll probably want the extra food for running scientists later on anyway.

Settle my second city northeast of the capital, primarily for Stone, but also Ivory, Cows and Wheat. With plenty of workshop-able Plains, this will probably wind up being a pretty good production city. I get the Stone hooked up so I can build the Pyramids (Representation, woo!) after a border pop. Athens makes a few more warriors to spawnbust the land around me.

BW reveals some Copper which, by the looks of things, Izzy has already decided to settle. She also beats me to Alphabet, but I manage to trade it off for some techs. Settle our third city southwest of Athens for some Horses, Gold and Marble - it's in the tundra, though, not so conveniently.

Izzy founds both Hinduism and Judaism, and converts to the former, while Mansa gets Buddhism. The island is basically split into the north and south halves, with Nappy and Izzy being Hindu and Monty, Mansa and Augustus converting to Buddhism. Isabella starts getting pissy after I refuse her demands for Construction, so I decide to convert to Hinduism in order to prevent her and Nappy from curbstomping me. Monty may be an issue, but from the looks of things he's been boxed in (or something like that. He starts with -2 "First Impression" diplo points - WTF!). He decides to settle a city down south, just to the northeast of my empire, taking some strategic resources I had planned to settle. Oh well, he'll get his worth sooner or later.

Spawnbusting seems to have kept "my" land free of any barb cities, so I found Thebes for some Corn and Wine - and a load of irrigated grassland. Aggressive seems to have helped out a little with that fogbusting, since my warriors are now faring fairly well against Archers when fortified. IW reveals some Iron to the east, so the fifth city goes there.

Montezuma is - well, being Montezuma, so he declares war on Mansa Musa. He bribes in France on it, too, and Nappy takes one of his core cities. So, while this is going on, I make some Chariots and backstab him, taking that city that he settled away from the rest of his empire - and a nice stack of four workers! I bribe him into peace with Aesthetics, bringing me to 1AD with six cities. :D



 
Emperor/normal, thru 1380AD:

Spoiler :

Settled NW to grab the rice, took Izzy out with axes and kept her 4 cities. After economic recovery I joined a war with AC and Mansa against Monty and took 2 cities from him in the NW before he capped to Mansa. Got the free artist from music but lost the GLib (to Ragnar, it turns out). Took MilTrad from lib, got merchants from Lisbon (my GP farm) and Athens for 2 TMs (1500:gold: and 2100:gold:, both to Timbuktu) - the first powered me to rifling, the second upgraded 30 cuirassiers to cavalry. I'll attack Nappy next turn and cap him, leaving him with his cities bordering Mansa (for chain capping). Then it should be trivial to cap Mansa, Monty, AC. Hopefully that will get me domination without having to go overseas for Rags. Pretty easy game once Izzy is gone.
 
1758 AD Domination

Spoiler :


EDIT from my previous post, Monty founded Buddhism, not Mansa. Silly me.

I think my decision making in terms of "how long do I wait until I capitulate the AI" was a bit off this game, and my decisions to take earlier capitulations when taking a few more cities was probably possible made victory come later than it should have. Nonetheless, a win is a win. ^^

Izzy and Montezuma decide to declare war on Mansa Musa (surprise surprise), and takes his capital. I jump in on the fun with an Elepult-turned-Trebuphant army, taking and razing Gao (it was settled really for no reason, it was just a bunch of plains so not entirely worth keeping), as well as taking Visigoth, a barb-turned-Mali city. Mansa gets completely wiped out when Nappy joins in as well, taking Djenne (which I had wanted to grab. Alas.)

My next target was Montezuma, who seemed to be unit spamming far less this game than usual. He got cut down to two cities fairly easily, before my army started running out of steam. I capped him, no tech though, since he was struggling in that department.

The next move was to beeline Rifling - lost the Lib race by a considerable margin as a result, but I think it paid off. Isabella is my biggest threat right now - Nappy is fairly far behind in tech and Pleased with me, and Caesar has only five cities and almost half my army size. Izzy has one city kind of awkwardly sandwiched between my lands and Nappy's, so I take a large-ish stack of Macemen, Elephants and a few Trebs and take it. She responds by ramming her stack into the city and having most of it get killed. Meanwhile, I take a second stack of Rifles and Trebuchets and sweep through the "main" part of Spain. Isabella's been religion spamming like crazy this game - she's got Hinduism, Judaism, Islam AND Christianity! By the time I reach her capital, she has Rifles, but not enough to really hold off anything. I take her holy cities and the rest of the "attractive" ones, leaving her with some Tundra cities and Mansa's old capital (in retrospect, could've easily taken that one from her as well.)

From there, I really take the momentum gained from war with Spain to finish off the rest of the civs on the continent. I research up to Steel before having to backtrack and research Democracy (trades with vassals helped immensely, though) Rome only has five cities, and none of them are really anything special. He capitulates with ease after I take the three southernmost cities in his empire. From there, I take some time to rebuild. I run my slider at 0% for siege weapon upgradin' money, trying to push my tech advantage over Nappy as hard as I can. He has 11 cities, so he's certainly no pushover, but he really can't stop my far larger stack. I leave him with one "viable" city, Orleans, and his overseas colonies, capitulating him.

Apparently, there were two more civs in this game that I'd never met - Lincoln and Frederick. They're both capped to Ragnar, though, so no hopes of conquest there. I load up some Galleons with Rifles and take two barb cities on an island to the west while running my culture slider at around 30%, and the land that the cities got when they stopped revolting brought me up above 64% for the win.



 
Signing in Monarch/Normal. I've been trying to bump up the difficulty from Prince lately, with mixed success.

SIP seems like the wise choice, but I'll look around with the scout first.

EDIT: to 200s AD

Spoiler :
I haven't founded any wonders, but I have managed to take the Spanish down to one city with a late Swordsman/Phalanx push. Probably lost five or six units, but that's not bad considering it was done without siege. I had to stop before their last city because Izzy got Longbows, negating my chances of cracking her - I really want that city, it's a prime commerce site. War's done, for now, and I got a few backfill techs from her. Once Medieval tech comes along I'll finish her off and decide on a victory condition.

Teched Aesthetics and brokered it to Mansa Musa for some gold, then the Romans for a few more backfills. I'm about par in terms of tech parity but this extra land should get me where I need to go. The plan is to use Spain's former capital as a GP farm and start cranking out Great Scientists. I've got some decent production spots so maybe Domination is in order.

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noobie here, so I downloaded the zip file from the first post and put it into my saved games directory under Civ4-bts-civ4saves-single but I don't see it. Is everyone here running 3.19?
 
sorry guys i missed this little tidbit in the firstpost: 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.

my bad
 
Emperor/normal, 1730AD domination:

Spoiler :

Capped Nap, Mansa, Monty, took out Auggie, teched to combustion and took out Rags. I could have finished 100 years earlier by just clearing out my own continent - oh well. :rolleyes:

EDIT: Oops, none of my screenshots worked. :mad:
 
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