Monarch Wonderspam Strategy

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By the way I do technically have iron east of Lyons, but that's right next to Portugal's borders and is just asking to get pillaged if I war with Portugal. I keep forgetting to send some workers down there to hook up my tundra iron. But I do, eventually.

Paya finishes in Lyons. It's a crappy wonder for the wonderspam strat, since I spend most of the game in OR anyway. But it gives me some GP points at least. At Lyons, I go for Confu monastery in anticipation of Apolostic Palace's hammer bonus.

My warrior has made it almost all the way back. I should be able to get a good price for my maps after Paper. Clockwise starting with me, its: France, Ethiopia, Inca, USA, China, Arabia, Celtia, Rome, Byzantium, and Portugal.

My follow-up, and less-defective, Confu missionary goes for Tours instead of Marseilles, since Tours is more culturally vulnerable.

Orleans is in desperate hammer shortage mode all the time since it keeps using those cottages. So I have it make a monastery for the AP hammer bonus.

I am so close to civservice that I temporarily have some cities go Research so I can get it in 1 turn and not 2.

Bureau! I switch immediately without anarchy. Thank you Golden Age! Bureau helps with both commerce and hammers. I am drowning in a backlog of wonders right now, so I actually care about that hammer bonus more than the commerce bonus--for now.

I go for metal casting next, after checking and seeing that nobody is in position to take Philosophy away from me anytime soon. It only takes 2 turns to research it courtesy of the Golden Age and Bureaucracy.

My power rating has gone from dead last to tied-for-last, which is an improvement I guess. Boy, I guess that doesn't say much for Inca if I managed to catch up with them militarily just by building a chariot and some wonders.

I keep checking and Portugal and Ethiopia continue to have empty hands!

Nobody will trade me Construction. But there's nothing else I want. Mao has Feudalism, but I don't need that yet, either. Plus he hates me and won't trade it anyway, after I agreed to Ethiopia's demands to stop trading with him.

I forgot where I made my last Confu missionary, but he got the job done right this time in Marseilles.

Got metal casting. Cheap forges all around! Thank you Industrious + Golden Age! Everyone, even Paris which is in the middle of making a wonder, starts forges. Except Lyons, which is almost done with a Confu temple (soon to be +2 hammers with AP, and I want that extra culture to put even more pressure on Portugal) so I let that finish before it starts on a forge. Rheims goes forge->Colossus of course.

I go for DivRight next. I actually want Uni of Sank even more than Spiral, but I also want to grab a virgin DivRight to found Islam. Being 2nd to Paper is no big deal. Being 2nd to Philo or Divine Right sucks.

Also note that there are 4 civs with Confu as state religion now: me, Ethiopia, Portugal, and now Inca.

I get a Great Spy and settle him in Paris for the beakers--again. I don't really care for Scotland Yard. I don't care much for espionage in the early game as you can tell from my perpetually-zero-percent espionage slider. (EDIT: in later games I would realize that you can Infiltrate with great spies and gain an ENORMOUS amount of beakers doing so. So I recommend that route rather than settling, for the early game.)

So now I have a pair of Great Spies settled in Paris.

Still nothing worth trading for.

Colossus finishes. I momentarily have Rheims make Hagia Sofia but change it to chariots. Lyons starts on the Sistine Chapel. In hindsight I should've prioritized HS at Lyons or Paris, and Sistine in Rheims, as I would ultimately lose the race for HS and its Great Engineer points.

DivRight finishes. Islam founded in...

Lyons?! Oh GREAT. I thought it'd end up somewhere other than Lyons, the natural candidate for Heroic Epic + West Point given its massive production base. Now Lyons is the only city with 2 religions--one of them Confucianism which is HUGE on this map. With 2 gold-spouting shrines (one existing one to be built), Lyons is the obvious candidate for Wall Street.
 
That's some impressive wonderspamming going on there.

Your empire size at this stage seems to work very well... cottagespam cities, cities that make great people, etc.

I was surprised that you had mentioned a worry of losing cows to the portuguese back when lyons was a holy city with creative bonus and stonehenge bonus. I think you might have already had a world wonder there too. Your wonderspam cities are old and have culture points like nobody's bizness.
 
That's some impressive wonderspamming going on there.

Your empire size at this stage seems to work very well... cottagespam cities, cities that make great people, etc.

I was surprised that you had mentioned a worry of losing cows to the portuguese back when lyons was a holy city with creative bonus and stonehenge bonus. I think you might have already had a world wonder there too. Your wonderspam cities are old and have culture points like nobody's bizness.

Thanks. I tend to overestimate the culture of enemy capitals, yeah. I wasn't sure if I could get Lyons up and running before that capital expanded its borders...
 
More interesting developments. But this caught my eye. Strange that someone who writes a thread on an Espionage Economy :mischief: should say this ...

.
I get a Great Spy and settle him in Paris for the beakers--again. I don't really care for Scotland Yard. I don't care much for espionage in the early game as you can tell from my perpetually-zero-percent espionage slider. (EDIT: in later games I would realize that you can Infiltrate with great spies and gain an ENORMOUS amount of beakers doing so. So I recommend that route rather than settling, for the early game.)

So now I have a pair of Great Spies settled in Paris.

Scotland yard gives +100% EPs to all sources in the city, including palace, courthouse and spy specialists. So it simply doubles any other GSpies settled there. It is nearly always better (in terms of EP production) to make Scotland Yard with one of your first two GSpies if you're not going to use them for a GoldenAge or an Infiltration mission. The dilemma I've not yet resolved for myself is, assuming I will have 2 GSpies which should I settle, the first or the second? That depends on other sources of EPs and will vary from game to game. The downside to Scotland Yard is the loss of 6 beakers (with Representation) which can be useful at some stages of the game but making your capital an Espionage City as well as Science City is a great combo with strong synergy.
 
More interesting developments. But this caught my eye. Strange that someone who writes a thread on an Espionage Economy :mischief: should say this ...



Scotland yard gives +100% EPs to all sources in the city, including palace, courthouse and spy specialists. So it simply doubles any other GSpies settled there. It is nearly always better (in terms of EP production) to make Scotland Yard with one of your first two GSpies if you're not going to use them for a GoldenAge or an Infiltration mission. The dilemma I've not yet resolved for myself is, assuming I will have 2 GSpies which should I settle, the first or the second? That depends on other sources of EPs and will vary from game to game. The downside to Scotland Yard is the loss of 6 beakers (with Representation) which can be useful at some stages of the game but making your capital an Espionage City as well as Science City is a great combo with strong synergy.

EE is completely tongue in cheek. It is more proper to call it an Infiltration Gambit or something like that. In any case, I have learned the error of my ways and now only use early spies for golden ages and Infiltration. Scotland Yard doubles spy points, but early on that just gives you a whopping +4 spy points per turn, which is pretty sad compared to Infiltration or a golden age (though usually the Music free artist is my first GA so a spy is typically just half of my 2nd golden age).

Therefore, if I were to get 2 spies early on, I would use the first to Infiltrate and the second I'd keep in reserve since I inevitably spawn a Great Artist that needs a partner to generate a 2nd golden age (after I already burned the free Music one as my 1st).

If I didn't want to Infiltrate or GAge for whatever reason, I'd rather settle the first and use the 2nd as Scotland Yard since a doubling of +4 EPT is really sad, but upping the stakes to 3 beakers and 16 EPT via settling, is okay. That's just my 2 cents though, as those +% really start kicking in later on, whereas the +# help out no matter what.

As an aside, my AP-helped build order almost always goes for monasteries and temples prior to forges, as forges give a +25% boost that isn't as good as the straight-up +2 hammers from AP buildings early on when your city is small. Once again, it's the difference between +% and +# and the # wins early on. AP building hammers are particularly good for cities that have almost no production capacity (e.g., one-tile islands).
 
EE is completely tongue in cheek. It is more proper to call it an Infiltration Gambit or something like that.
:lol: don't take my comments too seriously... I was only pulling your leg ;)

In any case, I have learned the error of my ways and now only use early spies for golden ages and Infiltration. Scotland Yard doubles spy points, but early on that just gives you a whopping +4 spy points per turn, which is pretty sad compared to Infiltration or a golden age (though usually the Music free artist is my first GA so a spy is typically just half of my 2nd golden age).
I have yet to try the Infiltration Gambit (that is a good name for it) more for lack of a suitable target than any reluctance to try such an interesting strategy. In my games so far when I get an early GSpy my neighbours always seem to be behind me in tech... so I settle him. Then the next one does indeed become a Scotland Yard.

Therefore, if I were to get 2 spies early on, I would use the first to Infiltrate and the second I'd keep in reserve since I inevitably spawn a Great Artist that needs a partner to generate a 2nd golden age (after I already burned the free Music one as my 1st).

If I didn't want to Infiltrate or GAge for whatever reason, I'd rather settle the first and use the 2nd as Scotland Yard since a doubling of +4 EPT is really sad, but upping the stakes to 3 beakers and 16 EPT via settling, is okay. That's just my 2 cents though, as those +% really start kicking in later on, whereas the +# help out no matter what.
My comments about settling the first or second GSpy were meant to cover a situation later in the game. If you don't get the Great Wall it can be a long time or only a stroke of good fortune to get a GSpy. It is not until Constitution and jails that you can run many spy specialists. Getting a GSpy at that stage of the game means you have palace, courthouse and jails and maybe running 3 spies so the decision is not so clear cut and if you were planning to raise the EP slider that would also favout Scotland Yard over a settled GSpy. That's what I meant by my comments. Of course everything you've said is correct but assumes early GSpies, probably from the Great Wall.
 
:lol: don't take my comments too seriously... I was only pulling your leg ;)


I have yet to try the Infiltration Gambit (that is a good name for it) more for lack of a suitable target than any reluctance to try such an interesting strategy. In my games so far when I get an early GSpy my neighbours always seem to be behind me in tech... so I settle him. Then the next one does indeed become a Scotland Yard.


My comments about settling the first or second GSpy were meant to cover a situation later in the game. If you don't get the Great Wall it can be a long time or only a stroke of good fortune to get a GSpy. It is not until Constitution and jails that you can run many spy specialists. Getting a GSpy at that stage of the game means you have palace, courthouse and jails and maybe running 3 spies so the decision is not so clear cut and if you were planning to raise the EP slider that would also favout Scotland Yard over a settled GSpy. That's what I meant by my comments. Of course everything you've said is correct but assumes early GSpies, probably from the Great Wall.

Yup I agree. I'm one of those people who never sets his espionage over 0% though, so SY doesn't do wonders for me. :)
 
Paris finishes the AP and switches to Confu Temple for the +2 hammers from AP. I could make spiral but that's not as effective as National Epic at this point; I simply don't have enough Confu temples to make Spiral worthwhile yet, but National Epic's effects are immediate.

I vote for myself for the AP vote, but Confu has spread so far and wide that my voting power is greatly weakened.

Poor, beleaguered Orleans (which I repeatedly used for workers, settlers, and missionaries since every other city was busy with more important things) will soon have a monastery that gives +2 hammers for a confu temple, which gives another +2 hammers. Both get OR and forge bonuses too, so hopefully Orleans will have a decent hammer production rate soon.

Rheims makes chariots because some of my cities have no defense.. such as Rheims itself!

I lose the AP vote. Darn those popular Ethiopians! At least the Incans like me more than the newly-crowned AP leader.

My new cities continue to crank out basic infrastructure like temples and lighthouses.

Ethiopia continues to be empty-handed, and I spread Islam to Paris.

Marseilles will now pick up the military slack--it's run out of infra to build and will go for barracks.

Found Philo. Rheims gets tagged with it. I go for Paper next to get Uni of Sankore and to trade maps.

Lyons finishes with Sistine. I switch from Versailles to Spiral.

Still no techs to trade. I settle for Arabian spice for my French fish.

I have only enough temples to make 2 Confu Academies. Tours and Paris look like they could use them the most. Paris might be able to annex something in Ethiopia, plus the +2 hammers and +2 beakers helps more there than anywhere else, given that it's my wonderspam capital, Bureaucracy city, and will have Oxford soon.

Paper finishes. I have crappy options after that and decide to go for University so as to give my non-wonder cities time to build universities for Paris's eventual Oxford University. I am teching way beyond my production capacity and have a backlog of wonders to build, including Hagia Sofia, which I keep putting off. Rheims is now building a spy after finishing building its pair of chariots.

I get another Great Scientist. Cool, that Great Library is working. It's the main reason why I get that wonder--to increase the odds of getting a Great Scientist for an Academy. After the first one, the rest are gravy. I settle him because ironically I need the +1 hammer from a settled Great Scientist more than the +1650 beakers for Education.

Well, I can trade for Construction now, but I don't want to help Ethiopia. I'm not keen on helping Justin either, but he's 2 turns away from Theology and I already traded CoL away earlier, so I decide to give him a sweet deal for Construction and his world map.

I then turn the tables and sell him MY map for 20 gold. He had 60 gold. I try to sell maps only for less than the amount of gold someone has, as that guarantees that I am getting a fair trade. For instance, if he only has 20 gold and offers all of it for my map, maybe if I make him wait a few turns and he has more gold, he'll offer more than 20 gold.

I also sell incense to Justin.

Then I initiate a massive map-selling campaign. I trade world maps with Inca along with their 40 gold, then go back to Justin and sell him the new map info I just got. I keep doing this with everyone until I'm filthy rich. Nobody else has Paper yet, and when someone does get Paper, they will realize that I already sold the world map to everyone, so there will be no profit left in map-selling by that point.

I also sell wheat to Ethiopia since they had more gold per turn than anyone else and I doubted they needed the extra health anyway. Plus it might eventually give me enough +diplo ("thanks for many years of resources") to get me to Friendly mode, i.e. "they won't declare war on me" mode.
 
Uni of Sank has displaced National Epic in my ever-growing backlog of wonders to build. I stupidly forgot that I traded Theo to Justin and thus eventually lost Hagia Sofia to him, ugh.

I am happy that Ethiopia's cities are getting pounded by my culture, but I am less happy about getting a stupid Great Artist as my next Great Person.

I can't get anyone to trade or give me Compass for cheap. Except Portugal, but I don't want to help my future victim.

Ethiopia hates Rome. I don't want to sour relations with Rome, which being weak makes for an ideal trading partner as I can sell my crappy stuff to him. So I vote no. I even sell Rome some ivory as they are so weak and far away that I don't care if they get elephants out of the deal.

My 108 votes is slightly higher than Yaqob's 98, and enough people side with me that we vote down the anti-Roman resolution.

I still can't get Compass for cheap. Sigh. In hindsight I probably should have bit the bullet and traded Theo but I had forgotten that I had traded it to Justin and still thought I had a monopoly on it. That's what I get for playing hours of civ in one sitting.

American wine for French gold. Okay.

I get Education. Just in case, I research Machinery.

My neighbors STILL have empty hands, so I build universities in some idle cities. However, Saladin has full hands, which worries me. He only has a chariot parked near my borders, though, so I'd have a lot of time to prepare for his faraway invasion stack if he declared on me.

I get waters of life in my oasis. Thanks RNG, but next time don't give me vermin and 2 slave revolts and whatnot in Paris, and keep your waters of life, okay?

Spiral finishes. Even at 100% science, I'm clearing a profit thanks to my shrines.

Uni of Sank is right behind Spiral. I also got Machinery. I went for Engineering's Notre Dame next. Also for pikemen.

Paris has a backlog of wonders as usual. I go for National Epic for a powerful Great Person boost. [NOTE: If I had to do it again, I'd give Natl Epic to Lyons to go with its Wall St; this is because I've found that tandem wonder monopolies work well, where one city has most of the wonders and the other has overflow + Natl Epic; they do a tag-team job of GP generation.]

I get a great prophet and told him to move closer to my idle Great Artist for a Great Golden Age. Confu, Hindu, and Buddhism were the dominant religions, so shrining anything else would be pretty useless. Which didn't stop me from doing it for some culture boosting, but in hindsight I should have settled all prophets except the one for the Confu shrine.
 
More interesting happenings. Keep playing and posting. I think Louis might have this one in the bag.
 
Great post Axident, I am enjoying this, always wanted to do it myself but someone would declare on me everytime spoiling my wonder collection!
 
Great post Axident, I am enjoying this, always wanted to do it myself but someone would declare on me everytime spoiling my wonder collection!

@Uncle and @Indian--thanks, and this is one hell of a weird wonderspam game. Usually someone declares on me by now and I'm fending them off with whipped troops and then build some more and counterattack, but my religion spreading to half the map has made me really popular apparently!
 
I'm really enjoying reading this.

I love to wonderspam, but can only manage to do it well on noble so far.

So i am learning things.

Keep the posts coming.
 
I have been looking at your pictures in detail and I'm surprised that you are developing Paris the way you are. Why so many cottages? It is your wonder machine, it has a happiness limit of 19 and health of 16 in 560 AD, which is impressive. But the pop is only 10 and growing slowly with a food surplus of only 4.

If you replaced any 2 of those riverside cottages with farms earlier in the game you could have been 2 or 3 pop bigger for many turns. The same number of cottages could have been built on non riverside tiles so you'd have the same commerce and no restrictions from irrigation. The 2 extra food would enable you to either fuel faster growth (6 food is 50% faster than 4 food ;) ) and when nearer the cap each farm would allow you to work another grassland mine. An extra 2 pop, with grassland farm and grassland mine pairing, would give an extra 3 basic hammers. Those hammers with forge, OR and Beaucracy are 6 every turn and when building a wonder with the appropriate resource 9 hammers. That would speed up you wonder backlog a huge amount. Building wonders faster means growth in GPP production and hence earlier GPs.

Orleans and Marseilles has the same low food problem which a riverside farm or two would alleviate. Note, I am not advocating farms-instead-of-cottages since you've chosen a CE approach but a farms-as-well-as-cottages approach, at least until you run out of space. It only requires a little more planning and maybe one extra worker to build an occassional cottage and farm instead of just cottage. The cottage is delayed a few turns while the farm is worked for growth, but that can be recovered by better trade routes. Obviously working a farm and a cottage is preferable to just working a cottage as long as the happiness and health allow and as long as there is space... and both these conditions apply.

You are doing amazingly well, but could you have done even better by this simple improvement? How say you?
 
I have been looking at your pictures in detail and I'm surprised that you are developing Paris the way you are. Why so many cottages? It is your wonder machine, it has a happiness limit of 19 and health of 16 in 560 AD, which is impressive. But the pop is only 10 and growing slowly with a food surplus of only 4.

If you replaced any 2 of those riverside cottages with farms earlier in the game you could have been 2 or 3 pop bigger for many turns. The same number of cottages could have been built on non riverside tiles so you'd have the same commerce and no restrictions from irrigation. The 2 extra food would enable you to either fuel faster growth (6 food is 50% faster than 4 food ;) ) and when nearer the cap each farm would allow you to work another grassland mine. An extra 2 pop, with grassland farm and grassland mine pairing, would give an extra 3 basic hammers. Those hammers with forge, OR and Beaucracy are 6 every turn and when building a wonder with the appropriate resource 9 hammers. That would speed up you wonder backlog a huge amount. Building wonders faster means growth in GPP production and hence earlier GPs.

Orleans and Marseilles has the same low food problem which a riverside farm or two would alleviate. Note, I am not advocating farms-instead-of-cottages since you've chosen a CE approach but a farms-as-well-as-cottages approach, at least until you run out of space. It only requires a little more planning and maybe one extra worker to build an occassional cottage and farm instead of just cottage. The cottage is delayed a few turns while the farm is worked for growth, but that can be recovered by better trade routes. Obviously working a farm and a cottage is preferable to just working a cottage as long as the happiness and health allow and as long as there is space... and both these conditions apply.

You are doing amazingly well, but could you have done even better by this simple improvement? How say you?

Yup, I completely agree. Since a city can only work a limited number of tiles, you might as well buff up its population first and then cottagespam for Bureaucracy. Usually this isn't that big of a deal if your capital has many food resources, which I was used to pre-BtS. So my sense of timing was wrong.. for BtS I seem to get low-food capitals a lot, in which case farms are much more useful.

I was away from Civ for a long time until BtS came out; I played a few Monarch games to get back up to speed and am still working out kinks and making mistakes on Immortal!

Also, the tandem approach works pretty well for GP generation--I should have built Natl Epic in Lyons not Paris so that they have roughly equal GP output. A tri-city thing might also work, but it's harder to do it on standard sized maps, as you also need to use some production sites for military and not just wonder.
 
Folks, I lost all my screenshots for this game, as I detailed in my Immortal Dutch Domination thread. I'm really sorry about this, but on the plus side, it's pretty obvious that I had the game in the bag. The short story is that I got to Friendly with Ethiopia and Portugal never did attack me... I got to Cavalry fairly early and simply ran over Portugal with a cav stack and a cannon/foot soldier stack so quickly that it had no time to capitulate to anybody, nor did Ethiopia submit an AP vote to stop the war against Portugal in time. At that point I paused to let this thread catch up, but it was pretty clear that I could simply keep running over civs not named Ethiopia and stack lots of machine guns and Infantry on that flank in case Ethiopia ever became less than Friendly due to my declaring war on all of its friends. At that point I would probably have artillery and Ethiopia itself would fall.

Now, I could try to replay the game, but frankly it wasn't much of a challenge after Mil Tradition. Nobody really needs to see a guide on how to use cavs against medieval units, right?

I've posted in great detail virtually every turn I played, and I hope that it's been instructive. If you enjoyed this thread, thanks for the support and may you wonderspam your way to victory as well!
 
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