Monarchist Cookbook Game IV, Mao Zedong of China!

[Diamondeye]

@diamondeye

Spoiler :

as to the civs, i have met alex and vicky, both came to me from the south. there has been no interaction between them or us yet. both are at cautious.

a comment on your turnset:
your city placement has obviously been hindered somewhat by lack of knowledge of the gems so your second city is in an inferior place. however, shanghai is a very good city (especially after calendar). curious about your choice of nanjing though: did you not know about the iron at the time? because to me there is no real urgency to settle nanjing whereas the iron is more important and at risk from alexander, so i would have considered it a priority.

on the other hand, your tech path seems very solid and your economy is not as bad as it might be for the number of cities.

Spoiler :

I had not discovered the Iron iirc, when settling Nanjing. Has Alex founded Hindu in your game aswell?

I agree that the fact that I had no knowledge of the gems is a drawback, but I have plenty of time to get a city down there, I believe. And with some of the food (fp, i believe there is a food res aswell), it can be a fine city.

@Diamondeye

Spoiler :

Well, i have lately played lots of games with hatty and wilhelm so im used to have creative, so SH was just there to ease my pain

about Guangzhou, well, i have SH so there is monument ( border pop in few turns ) and i put my scout warrior there for garrison duty, but you are right, i should have built warrior there and not tie my woodsman warrior ( i really didnt scout to west at all ).

3 workers, all working with shanghai's tiles. Tho i will need to hook up the iron soon, so i need worker near my 3rd city fast.

Spoiler :

Okay, I have 2 workers building third, no worker improvements (except roads) outside Beijings bfc. What I am wondering about is the fact that both you and tycoonist are so fast to build grans. I know theyre 50% off due to exp, but we dont need em really, I mean once theyre up were at happycap. ofc the gem city has health issues but we have only one grain, so its only a +1. I think settlers, workers and escorts are better use of hammers atm. Granaries can follow once we start to hook up resources.

 

[oyzar]

@ Bleys

Spoiler :

Why did you place ghanzou there? The spot on the sugar is an insane future capital, with your aproach you just get two mediocre cities... You can take out alex with a war sometime later anwyays...

 

[Diamondeye]

@diamondeye

Spoiler :

as to the civs, i have met alex and vicky, both came to me from the south. there has been no interaction between them or us yet. both are at cautious.

a comment on your turnset:
your city placement has obviously been hindered somewhat by lack of knowledge of the gems so your second city is in an inferior place. however, shanghai is a very good city (especially after calendar). curious about your choice of nanjing though: did you not know about the iron at the time? because to me there is no real urgency to settle nanjing whereas the iron is more important and at risk from alexander, so i would have considered it a priority.

on the other hand, your tech path seems very solid and your economy is not as bad as it might be for the number of cities.

Spoiler :

I had not discovered the Iron iirc, when settling Nanjing. Has Alex founded Hindu in your game aswell?

I agree that the fact that I had no knowledge of the gems is a drawback, but I have plenty of time to get a city down there, I believe. And with some of the food (fp, i believe there is a food res aswell), it can be a fine city.

@Diamondeye

Spoiler :

Well, i have lately played lots of games with hatty and wilhelm so im used to have creative, so SH was just there to ease my pain

about Guangzhou, well, i have SH so there is monument ( border pop in few turns ) and i put my scout warrior there for garrison duty, but you are right, i should have built warrior there and not tie my woodsman warrior ( i really didnt scout to west at all ).

3 workers, all working with shanghai's tiles. Tho i will need to hook up the iron soon, so i need worker near my 3rd city fast.

Spoiler :

Okay, I have 2 workers building third, no worker improvements (except roads) outside Beijings bfc. What I am wondering about is the fact that both you and tycoonist are so fast to build grans. I know theyre 50% off due to exp, but we dont need em really, I mean once theyre up were at happycap. ofc the gem city has health issues but we have only one grain, so its only a +1. I think settlers, workers and escorts are better use of hammers atm. Granaries can follow once we start to hook up resources.

Spoiler Bleys :

Nice round. Too bad about Alex settling the gems. I would like a tech recap - you must be missing something now that you picked archery that early?

Also I seem to be the only one to get 3 settlers out this early, how can this be when so many of you are so amibitious on the landgrab? What are you building apart from Settlers? I am not even whipping (because, as you know, I hate the civic. Now that the events are off perhaps that is a bad move).

 

[oyzar]

@ diamondeye

Spoiler :

Maybe people are building workboats, workers, wonders(one guy built the henge) and libraries instead? Myself, i have 3 settlers out as well although i didn't settle the 4th city yet. One thing i did notice is that all of you are 10+ turns of tech behind me, how are you all teching so slow?

 

[rave69]

@ oyzar

Spoiler :

Yea, I also noticed that you are one tech ahead of me.. and few others. I guess its the advance of double fish city vs gem city which was further away.

 

[Bleys]

@ Bleys

Spoiler :

Why did you place ghanzou there? The spot on the sugar is an insane future capital, with your aproach you just get two mediocre cities... You can take out alex with a war sometime later anwyays...

Spoiler :

Yeah, I should have considered it, but I was trying to pack more cities into that area, since those lake tiles arent horrible. I really should have re-done that portion of the dotmap once I realized the GLH wasnt going to happen.

I also thought it would be able to build a Lighthouse, how big does a lake have to be before you can build naval units and LH's?

That sugar spot is a monster though, and there are plenty of spots to crowd in around it, there was no need for me to split it like that, I actually lose access to a flood unless I want another junk city.

@Diamond:

Spoiler :

I have Mining, Ag (starting techs), Fishing, BW, Hunting, Archery, IW, Wheel, and I am 2 turns from Sailing.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

No I'm not

Spoiler :

I initially moved the warrior 1 NE, and saw the plains hill covered in jungle, I thought about moving to it, but decided it'd be best for Moai Statues with the 2 fish and i hill for production, I settled in place.

First build was a worker, 1st tech was Bronze working. 1st worker builds a farm on corn, bronze working reveals no bronze.

Warrior goes off exploring, till I realize there are no huts/random events, I actually read it on game settings before I started, but still went off looking for huts

I initially think we're on an island, or Archipelago map, great isolation and jungle.

Yeah yeah laugh it up, it gets worse. Warrior exploring meets Korea, Alexander of Greece and Victoria of England.

By this stage I've popped 1 silver mine in BFC and I keep on finding little inlets and MORE jungle.

By this stage I've got out my 1st settler, I send him to the SE, and by the river/coast I spy 2 flood plains, but then I see floodplains and 2 gem's.. Its 2 moves away, no animals as yet..I'll risk it.

Spoiler :

YOU IDIOT I stop right next to a BEAR. Who promptly eats my settler, killing my blocking strategy/2 gem mine 2nd city and upsetting me even more, as I've popped a 2nd Silver mine in BFC.

Now I've given up all hope of getting best save. I explore with warrior more, beating a barb warrior. I'm 1 turn from Great light house.

Tech's Researched: In order Bronze working, fishing, Masonry, sailing, wheel, Pottery, iron working, 7 remain on writing.

Build in city:Worker, barracks-size 3,worker,barracks with settler absorbing wood chops for farms, finish barracks, work boat, warrior.

Plan: From here, work boats for food, spam settlers/warriors, settle cities to blockade north, Grab Gems/floodplains 1st. More workers, chop jungle, farm mine and head to Civil service.

My settler got eaten, because I tried to push it. I tried for the ring, and missed. Redeeming features, 2 silver mine, and another mine, 2 workers, warrior 1 point off Woodsman 2, 1 turn on Great lighthouse. Able to spam coastal cities, 6 happy cap in capital.

I won't be best, I wish I was 2 Silver mine in BFC...

Spoiler :

P.S. I've only found Alexanders starting position, Wang Kon came from SE,
Victoria from West of Alex, and we're just above the Jungle best in Northern Hemisphere. Also I've had 2nd thoughts about settling in place, should have moved to grassland with 3 way water access 1 S, Enough food to run 5 Grassland mines with +1 for growth.

View attachment 186749

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Keep in mind that with only my laptop and being at relatives, the report will be slightly less quality than normal. I think you can get a pretty good idea from it though, honestly.

Ok, First turn set:

Spoiler :

Settled in place. Started a worker, teched fishing, switched to WB, made a boat, then finished the worker while teching bronzeworking. Interesting I know.

After bronze picked up archery since there is no copper in sight. Met 2 AIs which you can see in the screen shots. Lots of jungle here so I'm going for IW early on to take advantage of the dual-gem city I settled. Capitol will probably be moved to the gem city eventually since honestly the start position is best as a GP farm. Lots of lakes so after IW and AH sailing and then monarchy are priorities.

There's a ton of room on this map for us and we can get a lot of decent cities peacefully so I'm going to try to play nice with alex - opened borders in hopes he'll send a missionary but also plan to connect roads for autospread network soon. Priority is a decent power rating and walling him off however.

Lots of jungle = lots of good cottage land IMO and we have our GP farm set too. 4th city will need to emphasize military though if we stay off directly bordering alex and keep over .75 power we're pretty safe for most of the early game really.

Pictures tell all for now:

I know it wasn't intended per se', but the jungles actually lend a bigger than normal advantage to expansive, and we lack copper and will probably rest on archers most of the early game vs barbs. So much for having a "weak" civ/leader - on this map the traits are pretty useful if the player just plays the map. Oh well. Time to look at other people's submissions.

View attachment 186751

 

[patagonia]

@ TMIT:

Spoiler :

I like your location for Shanghai.

I'd have gone IW before writing with this start though, since you've not taken advantage of writing for early scientists. Quicker IW would give more commerce and happy from the gems, and hopefully better military, although protective archers are actually one of the best counters to Alex if he's got copper.

You're definitely right about the expansive trait facilitating an early charge into the Jungle - you can build workers more quickly and quickly get 5-6 tiles improved around each city before moving on (plus the health bonus means you don't need to worry as much about remaining jungle tiles).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@ TMIT:

Spoiler :

I like your location for Shanghai.

I'd have gone IW before writing with this start though, since you've not taken advantage of writing for early scientists. Quicker IW would give more commerce and happy from the gems, and hopefully better military, although protective archers are actually one of the best counters to Alex if he's got copper.

You're definitely right about the expansive trait facilitating an early charge into the Jungle - you can build workers more quickly and quickly get 5-6 tiles improved around each city before moving on (plus the health bonus means you don't need to worry as much about remaining jungle tiles).

Spoiler :

After reading the other summaries, your note of tech path occurred to me (sadly just after I submitted my save actually). In my defense, I wanted to get one more settler out and then put up a library ASAP (probably whipped as the anger is cooling off there). In retrospect, this isn't anywhere near the power of going IW first since the priority here is to expand and clear the jungle...and for cottages this means sooner not later, which makes my save IMO weaker than some of the other submissions. Not too worried about Alex as this is only monarch, and shared religion/not immediate borders and .8 str or better of his makes war *very* unlikely and also fairly defensible.

I'd rate my save mid-tier sadly. I went for writing early kind of out of habit via playing too fast, and this is just the type of thing that bites me on immortal. I'm too impatient to slow down gameplay though, so I'm going to have to learn to clear these mistakes at my current speed if I want to move up (which I do, eventually). Moving slowly bleeds the fun out of the game for me, so that's just how things are sadly.

Anyway, thanks for the advice .

 

[Diamondeye]

Too bad IPEX, it looks like a brilliant save other than that miss with the settler!

 

[oyzar]

@ TMIT:

Spoiler :

I like your location for Shanghai.

I'd have gone IW before writing with this start though, since you've not taken advantage of writing for early scientists. Quicker IW would give more commerce and happy from the gems, and hopefully better military, although protective archers are actually one of the best counters to Alex if he's got copper.

You're definitely right about the expansive trait facilitating an early charge into the Jungle - you can build workers more quickly and quickly get 5-6 tiles improved around each city before moving on (plus the health bonus means you don't need to worry as much about remaining jungle tiles).

Spoiler :

After reading the other summaries, your note of tech path occurred to me (sadly just after I submitted my save actually). In my defense, I wanted to get one more settler out and then put up a library ASAP (probably whipped as the anger is cooling off there). In retrospect, this isn't anywhere near the power of going IW first since the priority here is to expand and clear the jungle...and for cottages this means sooner not later, which makes my save IMO weaker than some of the other submissions. Not too worried about Alex as this is only monarch, and shared religion/not immediate borders and .8 str or better of his makes war *very* unlikely and also fairly defensible.

I'd rate my save mid-tier sadly. I went for writing early kind of out of habit via playing too fast, and this is just the type of thing that bites me on immortal. I'm too impatient to slow down gameplay though, so I'm going to have to learn to clear these mistakes at my current speed if I want to move up (which I do, eventually). Moving slowly bleeds the fun out of the game for me, so that's just how things are sadly.

Anyway, thanks for the advice .

Um guys(and at tmit in particular)

Spoiler :

I went writing before IW, yet had IW as well before the turnset was over(although i had not hooked up gems). That was mostly because of my double fish spot who benefited enourmously from getting a library up.

TMIT: You seem to have gone way overboard with military... Most others have 3 cities with one more on the way(diamondeye have 4) or are further along in tech, or both... Really doubt GLH will be worth it on this map as you don't want all that many coastal cities...

Also i don't understand whats up with everyone hooking up the 3rd clam / building the 3rd mine.. You don't need all those improvements yet as there isn't enough happiness in capital for it. There are more important things for your workers to do .

 

[patagonia]

Um guys(and at tmit in particular)

Spoiler :

I went writing before IW, yet had IW as well before the turnset was over(although i had not hooked up gems). That was mostly because of my double fish spot who benefited enourmously from getting a library up.

TMIT: You seem to have gone way overboard with military... Most others have 3 cities with one more on the way(diamondeye have 4) or are further along in tech, or both... Really doubt GLH will be worth it on this map as you don't want all that many coastal cities...

Also i don't understand whats up with everyone hooking up the 3rd clam / building the 3rd mine.. You don't need all those improvements yet as there isn't enough happiness in capital for it. There are more important things for your workers to do .

@ oyzar:

Spoiler :

You made a very good job of leveraging writing before IW

You got that double-fish site up and running impressively quickly. Did you borrow corn from Beijing for some early whipping there (granary/monument?)

 

[oyzar]

@patagonia

Spoiler :

You could check my save you know, there is no granary and no monument there... The city are just going to produce 2-3 GS anyways(then probably be moai city later). Yes it did borrow the corn quite a bit(worker out quite nice actually as bejing didn't really want to work that extra food when it did borrow it). Chopped a forest and whipped one pop to get the library up sooner.

 

[RichardMNixon]

I planned to settle the same fish city eventually but figured I could backfill it after I took the territory I might have to compete for, didn't think about founding it early just for the commerce. And yeah, the third workboat was useless so far I suppose.

Resources

Wasn't really paying attention to the gems I guess, I think we might still be able to settle the new settler there though and build another for iron.

One thing I'm not sure of in succession games: if we hypothetically played from my save, would we be expected to do so as if we did not know where the iron was found in other saves?

Shanghai... fairly unimpressive at the moment.

I played around with my save a little, I can take the corn away from Beijing and assign it to a scientist, which finishes IW in 5 turns instead of 6, IW first does appear to be the superior choice though, I want to cut down that pig jungle.

 

[Winged Monkey]

Haven't played in ages, so this might be quite the challenge even though I mostly played emperor/immortal some moons ago...

Spoiler :

As you can see, I decided against settling in place, mostly because the starting point was food overkill and I was hoping to be able to settle another city north of the capital. Also, production looked like it could be an issue. By settling 1S we gained two grassland hills which should come in handy later on.

Unfortunately, it seems like it'll be difficult to utilize the clam I gave up, but on the bright side, the spot on the northernmost tip of the peninsula should make a great Moai Statues city, conveniently only sharing the corn tile with the capital.

I decided to make a run for Stonehenge. I hate, hate the dilemma of having to choose between 1) settling suboptimal jungle spots to be able to build a monument quickly or 2) slow development if there's no good production spots in the immediate surroundings.

Luckily, we got there.

In addition I've churned out three workers, a couple of warriors and an archer (I usually never research archery but we missed out on horsies and bronze, and well, the added bonuses of protective archers makes the tech more worthwhile imo.)

Pretty happy with my second city site. 5 flood plains and pigs. Mmmh, bacon! I'm in the process of cottaging up the floodplains. The nice food surplus will allow for a few specialists as well. I suppose I could farm the floodplains to make it a pure specialist farm, but I think I'll try finding a nice jungle site for that purpose later on.

El capital. We need some happiness soonish. Oracle -> Monarchy is a tempting possibility. Alternatively speed-researching to ironworking/calendar.

Initial dotmap.

Can you spot the problem?

Spoiler :

Yep, that's right. I haven't done enough exploring! My next priority is to pump out a few archers from Beijing to get a better lay of the land. Hopefully we'll have a decent amount of expansion room.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I'm sure you guys will hate my city placement, as usual...

Spoiler :

My first thought, upon seeing the start, was that it looked a lot like the one in MC3. My second thought was that, as in MC3, this start could be milked for a lot of coastal commerce whilst whipping and chopping for production. My third thought was that Cho-Ku-Nus are very cool, but they need Iron and Machinery.

So, from the beginning I had my eye on two things: securing Iron, and the possibility of taking MC off the Oracle. If I was really lucky, the latter might then allow me to pop a GE (via a forge) to bulb Machinery. Of course, I'd have to consult the lay of the land before committing to such a gambit, but this line of thinking helped me to focus my early choices in a particular direction: explore the local area thoroughly, whilst teching as fast as possible.

Turn 1 - I settled in place (no reason to move), and started weighing up the choice between BW + Worker or Fishing + Warrior. The latter matched my 'explore and tech' plan better, so that's what I chose. Start Fishing. Start Warrior.

Turn 9 - Fishing done. Start Bronze Working. Switch to Workboat.

Turn 11 - Beijing grew to size 2, and I rearranged the tiles to get the Workboat done asap:

Turn 20 - Workboat done. Continue Warrior. I now rearranged the tiles to maximise commerce:

Turn 29 - Bronze Working done. Start Sailing. Although I would occasionally switch to other tiles to speed either growth or production, I wanted to keep working the clam and lake tiles as much as possible. This made the next tech an obvious choice.

Also, by this time I had discovered Marble and Gems to the south, both of which fitted very nicely into my plans. As well as letting me build a Lighthouse to boost Beijing's food supply, Sailing would also let me connect the goodies to the capital with minimal roading.

Turn 30 - Warrior done. Start Worker. I briefly rearranged tiles again, to take advantage of the Expansive bonus until the Worker was ready to be whipped:

Turn 34 - Adopt Slavery.

Turn 35 - Whip Worker.

Turn 36 - Worker done. Start Workboat.

Turn 43 - Workboat done. Start Workboat.

Turn 45 - Sailing done. Start Iron Working. Since no copper had shown up, this would have been high on my to-do list even if I hadn't been dreaming of collateral crossbows.

Turn 47 - Switch to Lighthouse. This change was timed to allow efficient whipping. Either that or I forgot to switch when Sailing came in.

Turn 51 - Whip Lighthouse.

Turn 52 - Lighthouse done. Continue Workboat.

Turn 54 - Switch to Worker. Dumping a chop to preserve growth and use Expansive bonus.

Turn 55 - Switch back to Workboat.

Turn 58 - Workboat done. Continue Worker.

Turn 62 - Worker done. Start Warrior.

Turn 70 - Iron Working done. Start Mysticism. Iron showed up a little further away that I'd hoped, but in an easily connectable spot. I went for Myst because I wanted to get borders popped asap in the cities I was going to Settle - more for the busting of fog, than for the claiming of tiles - and because it's on the way to Priesthood. Warrior done. Start Settler. Pretty late to be starting my first Settler, but such is the cost of quick teching through the early game in this manner.

Turn 76 - Mysticism done. Start Masonry. I wanted to get the Marble improved straight away, so the new city could take advantage of its hammers and commerce.

Turn 77 - Settler done. Start Settler.

Turn 82 - Whip Settler.

Turn 83 - Settler done. Start Worker. Masonry done. Start The Wheel.

Turn 84 - Shanghai settled. Start Monument in Shanghai.

I have a feeling that this city site will make some people , given that it misses out on the piggies. But, as you can see from those purple dots, I thought very carefully about where to settle, weighing up the pros and cons of each spot. Getting the Marble hooked up promptly was a major reason for my choice, but this site has a few other benefits, such as reduced health problems (early on), better defence (from barbs or Alex), and leaving space for another excellent city to the west.

Turn 87 - Worker done in Beijing. Start Worker in Beijing. At this time I was stagnating the capital at size 3, since I'd sent its garrison out to fogbust. Not ideal, but it was the best I could come up with in the circumstances, given that I needed more Workers asap.

Turn 89 - Guangzhou settled. Start Monument in Guangzhou.

An obvious spot for early hook up of the Iron, and for general long-term goodness.

Turn 91 - The Wheel done. Start Meditation. Starting to close in on the prize.

Turn 94 - Worker done in Bejing. Start Warrior in Beijing. With whip fading, and enough Workers to be going on with, it was time to start growing the capital again.

Turn 97 - Monument done in Shanghai. Start Axeman. Beginning to worry about barbs.

Turn 100 - Meditation done. Start Priesthood

So, I ended the round with my goal nearly in sight. I still need Priesthood and Pottery, but the first of the gems will come online soon to speed that up. The capital, meanwhile, is hooked up to the marble, and getting ready to start on the shiny:

The southern hill is being mined at the moment, and those forests can also be chopped to speed things along.

My other two cities are looking rather crappy right now, thanks to the late settlement:

And, finally, here's the tech screen:

I'm quite pleased with how this has worked out so far, having set what seemed like a pretty fast tech pace to arrive at this point with almost everything I need. The Oracle is not yet guaranteed, but I reckon I've got a very good chance. If it doesn't come off, then my position would certainly be a lot weaker, though with the Iron already connected to all three cities, and the gems soon to follow, it wouldn't be a complete disaster (esp. if I got some compensatory cash).

Any comments, suggestions, or criticisms gladly accepted.

Oh, and btw, I won't have a chance to play round 2 next weekend. I'm thinking I might play a shadow from my own save, then rejoin you guys in round 3.

 

[oyzar]

random thoughts about the game

Spoiler :

So why exactly did we not start on top of the sugar? The spot is maybe the most insane burrecracy capital i have seen to date. +16 food. 5 resources if you count the sugar, 5 hills counting the gems. 11 health(12 with bannanas) without adding any other modifiers! That means the city can grow to size 9(10) without getting unhealthy(after you clear most of the jungle), of course you'll want grocer and aquaduct there quite fast(and you might even find more health resources like for example the wheat). Working the 4 resources + 16 cottages shouldn't be a problem(you can actually grow all the way to size 20 and above without getting more health, just need more happiness(probably from hrule)). Probably one of the best burrecracy capitals ever!

 

[r_rolo1]

Spoiler :

Well, rather uneventful turnset.......

First I decided to settle 1 S. Seriously, the city can't handle so much food. Besides that the tiles north of the clams are coastal... so there is land there

Spoiler :

Fishing first while building a warrior ( changed ASAP to a WB when fishing was done )....

During those times....

Spoiler :

I love alex ... at least it is one AI that I will not bother to make friendship with .....

Some more neighbours in da house:

Spoiler :

Well, another pro leader and of a fin civ...... well , let it be for now.

And our last known neighbour:

Spoiler :

I can live with her She seems to be far anyways.....

Anyway, using the build something while growing + whipping settlers and workers: I got a new city:

Spoiler :

My idea was to settle in the double gems site , but the &$%%&/&/$ barbs decided to settle 1 S of the sugar...... A good reason for this ( besides all of the jungle around.... maybe this time I'll even run Vassalage )

Spoiler :

At least we got iron near:

Spoiler :

Some info about my empire:

Spoiler :

It looks I forgot to take a screenshot of the cities screen.... I have a lib and 2 sci in capital.... and a settler ready to go

Some considerations:

Alex is becoming public enemy #1 .... i was planning to attack him in a nearby future anyway

I'm planning to make a nice sword + axe ( maybe cats in a longer planning ) to take first the barb city ( debating if it is worth to keep.... the best spot is clearly settling in the sugar ) and then to move vs Alex. He can't be trusted anyway and no one is his friend ( espionage indicates that we have max one more civ in this continent, more likely being only the 4 civs already known ( including us ) in here..... We'll have surely space and time for a more peaceful aproach later ( so much jungle to cut ..... )

Well , time to see the other saves .....

 

[tycoonist]

@ all on city placement:

Spoiler :

in terms of the gems city, i think the one on the sugar is by far the best spot. most people who have got there seem to have picked the same location for the iron city, though, so thats good at least