Monarchist Cookbook Game IV, Mao Zedong of China!

[Diamondeye]

Blaaargh I hadn't posted em. It was 3 for Winston, 2 for me and 1 for Tycoonist.

 

[Bleys]

I posted my 2nd round preview and save here, and now for the full report:

Spoiler :

I started out by canceling the Warrior in the Cap, and immediately whipping the Granary there, which would give me enough overflow for the Warrior. I sent that Settler there to the Iron, without escort, mainly because I had seen a Wang Archer roaming there and felt the area was safe. I said in an earlier post that I felt I didnt use pre-knowledge of the Iron (we were still 4 turns from IW in the save), but now, looking back at my earlier round, I see that I finished IW before I even made a Dotmap. So maybe I did use pre-knowledge, ugh, but oh well, sorry, so hard not too.

Anyway, my settler made it, and founded the Iron City:

Spoiler :

Alex founded a city very close. which will try to poach my wheat and grabs those horses:

Spoiler :

I cranked out another settler pretty quickly too, and grabbed the Gems City, which actually ended up in the same spot as it did in my original game, heh:

Spoiler :

Once IW came in, I teched Hunting, Archery, Mystcism. Two reasons for that, one, I hate using Libraries to pop borders. Monuments are simple, with an EXP leader, I often start a Granary, then a few turns from going to 2-pop, I stick the Monument in front, and whip it, with the overflow doubling into the Granary. Works very well. As for Hunting-Archery, this map is massive, and I fully expect Barbs to be a problem. I wont ever have enough units to adequately fogbust, and I want Archer garrisons in my cities, especially the ones close to Alex. I plan to take the city near my Gem City and the city near my Iron city ASAP, and hopefully poaching a couple workers in the process.

Once the Iron was all hooked up and connected, I started cranking out Swords, with a few Axes and Spears to support them. I had wandered into Alexs land checking for metal, and noticed he had Iron but hadnt hooked it up. He had 2 sources of Horse though, so Spears were a must. As I went, I teched Aesthetics, and part of Alphabet so I could trade Aest to Vicky for the rest of Alpha and Poly, which would open up Lit for me. I was planning the GL in the Capitol (which would become my GP farm once I moved my Cap to Shanghai). Finally, I had enough of an army on Alex's borders, and spotted a worker to grab as well, so I went for Alex. I had more troops coming toward the Iron City, so I could hopefully take Sparta and split his empire.

Spoiler :

Worked like a charm. I also made a reasonable trade with Wang right after the one with Vicky:

Spoiler :

I took Sparta with only a single lost unit. Alex had no metal hooked up yet, and had run a couple chariots over to chaste my Wood II Warrior around a bit, as he was causing trouble, pillaging roads, and threatening his Iron. This left only 2 archers in Sparta, which proved to be a piece of cake. I sent the rest of the army marching toward Athens, and took it out easily, which netted me Stonehenge and the Hindu Shrine! I swear I took pics here, but I dont seem to have them, so sorry about the lack of pics. At any rate, I left some garrison, and sent what I could back toward Thebes, the city south of my Iron, to support the attack there. It was on a hill, and had made more units, so I finally took it out, nabbing 2 workers in the process, and gave Alex peace.

From there it was pretty simple and straightforward. I made a few more settlers, grabbed the Fish spot, the Marble spot, and the Stone spot SW of Sparta. Alex actually had already mined the gold near there, and it would pop into Athens borders pretty soon. Once I teched Lit, I got the GL started in the Cap, and it finished in 415 AD:

Spoiler :

Here is a mess of screenshots of varios "State of the Union" stuff:

Spoiler :

Current Capitol:

Future Capitol:

Athens, Sparta and Thebes from Alex, nice cities indeed!

Glance screen, as well as my tech tree. From here, after Calendar (for MoM in Athens plus the happy/food resources I have), its into MC, Machinery, and finish off Alex with Chu's ASAP, and maybe even go after Vicky next set.

So for pro's and con's:

Pros:
-10 solid cities, with room for 10 more
-most dangerous neighbor mostly destroyed
-both Stone and Marble
-in HR and getting Calendar for vertical growth
-Shrine of our religion (planning to trade for Monotheism and get to OR, as well as teching CoL for Caste, and CS for Bureaucracy once I get Chu's)
-Built the GL, conquered Stoney for border pops.
-Nicely positioned for a Palace move, old cap + Fish City can run 10 Scientists between them, and still pump workers and settlers

Cons:
-tech slowed a bit, but should pick up now, will have Libraries all around, and the GL
-Army in tatters from the Alex war, but recoverable
-lots of undeveloped tiles, need workers ASAP
-Had to let Alex live . . . lost a lot of troops taking Athens and Thebes (Athens had 60% cultural defenses, lost 4 swords and a couple Axes taking it)

I am very happy with this round, everything clicked quite nicely and it was pretty fluid and natural, so I expect to see other saves in a similar position. We should not play from this save though, the game is basically over right now. With this much land and these resources, I expect any Monarch level player to be able to turn this into a no-brainer from here. The save is linked already, see the first sentence for that info.

 

[fugazi]

Fugazi, you need to put your second round in spoiler tags, some/most people are still playing. Also, if you want your round to be considered, you need to play your second round starting from the save chosen from the first round here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7192124&postcount=92

Shame though as your second round looks really nice, what with 96 beakers. Your tech advisor says construction in 7 and your bar says construction in 3, what's up with that?

Ugh, my apologies for screwing up. I seem in no shape to keep up with anything lately, damn mono/kissing disease. As for the erroneous turn display, it has to be a bug or glitch in the game. I run no mods, got the latest patch and I've noticed it before. No idea if it's just me that has it ..

 

[pawelo]

Sorry guys, dropping away due to (surprise) RL-overhead.
Starting a new assignment today and can no longer play @ work (those were the days.... ), while RL allows me only to play a bit on week-ends @home.

I'll be lurking though on how it's going.

With the bunch of players you all are, I'm pretty sure this game should be a cakewalk despite the challenging-save-selection system

 

[KingMorgan]

Sorry due to a RL interuption i'm not going to be able to get my save posted in time.

I'll still play the next round, time alllowing.

 

[rave69]

up to 415AD

Spoiler :

I sent first settler to grab the iron spot and build fast 2 settlers more. One for gems and one for double fish spot. After hooking up the iron I noticed something wierd, when i tried to chop jungle, I didnt get any hammers out of it. Im pretty sure that chopping jungle should give hammers in return? I didnt even get message in log about it... oh well, because i couldnt chop my swords out i put my workers build mines on every hill what i could reach.

I didnt tech much during my turns: IW -> myst -> math -> masonry -> construction -> currency. Like you can guess, i prepared to build quite huge swords+cats army. I think i over did it by a mile and alex's defences were much weaker than what i expected.

Here's the situation after taking the first city:

I took total of 4 cities off from Alex's, kept 3 and razed one which was small one on top of the stone. It didnt seem too good and i couldnt take any more maintenance.

Situation at 415AD:

I didnt take too many screenshots, if you want more details you can always open the save file.

What there is to do next:
War is still on, alex doesnt have anything to give with peace so I left it on. Theres still plenty of promoted troops left with medic unit so if you want to take alex's last 4 cities, it wont be any problem. Currency is done in 2 turns so continuing the war is probably one option and you wont be doing economical suicide. England and koreans are still far away and they dont seems to have any troops. Cities are building colosseums/libraries/aquaducts at this moment but i guess they can push out more units also if needed. You should be able to back fill techs with construction and currency if you want to.

Not too strong turns, I expected to get the war done much faster, but without chopping it really took some time. Anyway, game should be easily winnable still... considering my lead in powerratings.

 

[Zanttu]

when i tried to chop jungle, I didnt get any hammers out of it. Im pretty sure that chopping jungle should give hammers in return?

No, chopping jungle doesn't give you any hammers. Only normal forests give hammers when chopped. When you chop the jungle, the tile gets better due to the +1 food. Chopping normal forest makes the tile weaker due to the -1 hammer, so it gives you hammers in return. It does seem logical, doesn't it?

 

[rave69]

No, chopping jungle doesn't give you any hammers. Only normal forests give hammers when chopped. When you chop the jungle, the tile gets better due to the +1 food. Chopping normal forest makes the tile weaker due to the -1 hammer, so it gives you hammers in return. It does seem logical, doesn't it?

okay, thanks, it has been too long since i did swords and not just axe rushed my enemy, so it felt wierd that jungle+swords didnt give same rush effect as forests+axes

 

[Bleys]

You kind of have to pick the forest tiles out and chop them to get hammers. I did quite a bit of that. Its rare that a jungle is totally continuous, there are often a few forests mixed in.

Clearing jungle also helps health. I found it difficult to grow the Floodplains city because of this, so I had a pile of workers over there just clearing it. And while I think there is a map-generator thing that doesnt put jungles on plains tiles, it often puts a forest instead, and that cleared plains tile near a bunch of forests CAN grow a jungle on it.

That was a confusing sentence, but not retyping it, LOL.

 

[ChromiumL]

I unfortunately missed the first round, but thankfully didn't miss the second round! I am going to try to keep this brief as it seems that there were tons of submissions for the last round (I only took screenshots at the end...):

Spoiler :

I warn you that pretty much my only victories at this level have been space/culture so I am a self confessed builder. As a result, this is probably a pretty mediocre save compared to those of you who went to war with Alex. I always prefer Medieval wars with my precious trebs (and Cho Ko Nus!), so my overall strategy was pretty much to build up, get a few wonders and start producing some GP. But, I really felt like I lacked direction for this playset and as a result, my save is pretty crappy... In retrospect, I probably should have been a little more aggressive in both settling and capturing cities. But, I have very little confidence in early waring at this level, and I am hoping playing here will help that!

Finished up IW and sent my settler to the SE to settle Guangzhou by the iron.

Started to tech towards Literature (for GL).

Made more settlers and settled Nanjing by the gems by Alex (with some overlapping tiles with Shanghai).

I built an extra settler to build a city next to all of the silk--but my science rate was at 60% and decided to just let it camp out until some of my cottages matured and I could up the science rate.

As soon as Hinduism (Alex's religion) spread to my lands, I converted (I always try to be friends with any close aggressive neighbors--they make great barriers between me and my enemies!)

Along the way Victoria founded Judaism. Boo--three early religions on one continent = much war! Now I am regretting taking Hinduism. Victoria quickly spread Judaism into my lands, but I chose to stay with Hinduism.

After I got Asethetics I went ahead and built the Parthenon in Beijing.

After Literature, built GL in Guangzhou. Not sure if that was the best spot--I probably should have built it in Beijing, but I was afraid I would lose it if I didn't start building right away.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time clearing jungles, building cottages, and scouting out everyone elses land. I even had a WB scouting things, but he got ate by a barbarian.

I finished up at 400AD working on Metal Casting so that I could soon build my precious Cho Ko Nus.

Screenshots:

Cities:

Spoiler :

Beijing:

Shanghai:

Guangzhou:

Nanjing:

The current layout of the continent:

Spoiler :

SE:

NW:

SW:

Tech Tree:

Spoiler :

Diplomacy Situation:

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=187569&stc=1&d=1220409751

Strengths:
I got a few wonders--not sure how useful they will be though.
Pretty decent economy, with one settler waiting a little longer to settle in order to keep tech rate up.
Good relations with Alex, which may not be a strength if someone wants to war with Alex first (which in retrospect may have been a better idea).
Weaknesses:
Only decent military, not many barracks built.
Not a whole lot of cities--should have had more settlers waiting to settle incase Victoria/Alex tried to spread to the stone city area.
Behind in tech race with other civs.

 

[Diamondeye]

Okay people. I played my round and I simply quit.

I lost Shanghai to the barbarians. So besides posting too late, I am also not including a save, neither a report longer than this. I don't want to be a ****-up, but I don't like this system. Picking a save without Hunting NOR Iron Working with barb archers around is simply not fit.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, diamond.....

Spoiler :

I agree that who voted for Nixon save should had not been aware of that roaming archer ( i wasn't ). But I dodged the archer with a worker ( yup, crazy use for a worker... but I haven't lost it ) and in the end the guy decided to suicide vs one of my woodie warriors in a hill

Anyway I have my set done....

Spoiler :

After some dodging of the barb archer in the south ( too bad that I don't have pictures of it...it was funny ) I founded my iron city:

Spoiler :

And after getting some swords, i decided to move vs Alex:

Spoiler :

Why?, first, Alex is a backstabber. Second he's the closest. Third, he had Henge and the Hindu shrine in Athens

Campaing started well and razed a annoying city that Alex had putted south of me:

Spoiler :

It looks that the screenies of the fall of sparta and Athens both failed, but I kept both and then called peace. 3 cities, a wonder and a shrine for 3 lost swords, a nice bargain

Well, 6 cities without CoL or Currency is a economic nightmare. But Currency fell soon and CoL , in spite of having to go to 20%, fell easily too ( only 2 turns before the founding of Confu ). I'm now researching Calendar to take advantage of the jungle resources.

But , even with that eco issue , I decided to get another city on:

Spoiler :

To get gems.... it has a awful overlap with Shangai but it doesn't need shangai tiles to be decent. And was sorely needed.

Anyway some screenies:

Spoiler :

No one has alpha

As the more perceptive of you had noticed, i'm letting the cities to grow as big as possible to whip courthouses. That will surely help the economy.

I'm feeling the game pretty much in hand. A nice medieval war against what's left of alex ( I'm hoping a wonder, since he has marble ) and some more scouting to find the rest of the civs ( and maybe a path to both Vicky and Wang ). i don't want to be petulant, but I think this is a very winnable situation......

 

[RichardMNixon]

My first vote was for Bleys who did have an altogether ridiculous save as he noted

Rolo has my second vote. He has an economy about the same as mine (-3 bpt/+3 gpt), a similar number of techs (albeit on a different and probably better path, I've just recently appreciated how big a deal currency is), and he did that while also conquering half of Greece.

Third vote is for Rave69. His economy is a little weak relative to my personal reference, but he also has an extra city and a lot more units, and currency should give his economy a shot in the arm very shortly; and this is again while conquering half of Greece, so the weak economy now should payoff before too long.

 

[Diamondeye]

Well, diamond.....

Spoiler :

I agree that who voted for Nixon save should had not been aware of that roaming archer ( i wasn't ). But I dodged the archer with a worker ( yup, crazy use for a worker... but I haven't lost it ) and in the end the guy decided to suicide vs one of my woodie warriors in a hill

That Archer was not the problem. I got a Worker a Settler and a Warrior past him. The problem was the warrior who killed my Shanghai warrior

I vote Bleys 3, R_Rolo 2 and 1 for Rave69

 

[Bleys]

But I dodged the archer with a worker ( yup, crazy use for a worker... but I haven't lost it

I love this trick. Works even better on the water, where you can lead a barb galley away from your seafood with a workboat until you can get a galley out yourself. Its fun to watch the barbs chasing their tails, and its actually in character, IMHO, they are, after all, uncivilized barbarians, and SHOULD be easy to fool.

 

[RichardMNixon]

Is this game still going on or has everyone graduated to Immortal? Any interest in an Emperor's Cookbook? Might get a little excessive to have a cookbook at every level...

 

[Diamondeye]

RichardMNixon if I am not mistaken the game is still running.

 

[r_rolo1]

The game is still running... I was only expecting to see if more ppl submited saves... oh well

 

[Diamondeye]

I don't want to ruin your system Rolo but I believe some others are thinking in the same lanes as me. playing from a sub-par save is not getting us anywhere. It's simply not fun to struggle through a turnset to create the optimal save only to be handed a new (sorry for the harsh wording) pile of junk to turn into something good. This might be why we are getting fewer saves.

 

[r_rolo1]

agreed.... see my bullpen post from some days ago.

Now that there is a Immortal version, maybe it is better to resintall best save

What do you think?