MONTY The Mad Scientist

[absimiliard]

Wait??

WAIT?!?!?!?!

W A I T ! ? ! ? ! ? !

NO WAIT!

KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL!!!!!!!!

Oh, errm, sorry. No idea what came over me there.

I meant, be peaceful and happy. Pay maintenance on units you could be throwing at the enemy. Keep your soldiers happy, en-camped about the enemy city. Never ever, ever, throw them away like the mad-man we think Monty is just because it would save you some turns, and some money, and be fun, and bloody, and clear your space now, and not risk something changing . .. ..

Oh, wait. We ARE Monty?

K I L L . . . T H E M . . . A L L ! ! ! ! ! ! !

MAIM, MURDER, DESTROY! SACRIFICE TO THE GODS OF RANDOM NUMBERS!

Rape the land, pillage the women, ride off on the sheep. Or something like that. But definitely don't sit around waiting for catapults. They're only units, they exist to be thrown at un-conquerable city wall manned by desperate defenders. And if they don't wanna go then sacrifice their hearts to the gods until they do wanna go. But definitely don't wait for catapults to finish your first rush in the game.

C'mon Monty. You know you want bloodshed. Don't let MadScientist talk you out of what you know is right. And how can maimings, murder, pillaging, and looting be wrong when they feel soooooo very, very, right?

-abs
(duh)

 

[Charou]

5) Monty can not complete exterminate an AI. He must keep at least one city that he can continually pillage and have victums, um, er sacrifices to his alters.

I knew this rule was going to be a toughy.

 

[madscientist]

Wait??

WAIT?!?!?!?!

W A I T ! ? ! ? ! ? !

NO WAIT!

KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL!!!!!!!!

Oh, errm, sorry. No idea what came over me there.

I meant, be peaceful and happy. Pay maintenance on units you could be throwing at the enemy. Keep your soldiers happy, en-camped about the enemy city. Never ever, ever, throw them away like the mad-man we think Monty is just because it would save you some turns, and some money, and be fun, and bloody, and clear your space now, and not risk something changing . .. ..

Oh, wait. We ARE Monty?

K I L L . . . T H E M . . . A L L ! ! ! ! ! ! !

MAIM, MURDER, DESTROY! SACRIFICE TO THE GODS OF RANDOM NUMBERS!

Rape the land, pillage the women, ride off on the sheep. Or something like that. But definitely don't sit around waiting for catapults. They're only units, they exist to be thrown at un-conquerable city wall manned by desperate defenders. And if they don't wanna go then sacrifice their hearts to the gods until they do wanna go. But definitely don't wait for catapults to finish your first rush in the game.

C'mon Monty. You know you want bloodshed. Don't let MadScientist talk you out of what you know is right. And how can maimings, murder, pillaging, and looting be wrong when they feel soooooo very, very, right?

-abs
(duh)

Which is why I have MONTY on a short leash. I plan to entertain him by building the pretty Pyramids while finishing with Ragnar.

 

[Kev]

Looks like he still has copper in the capital culture borders. He'll hook that up again quickly and be a pain. Not to mention the whiny sacrifices-to-be wailing about their "motherland".

Take the city and break the rule for this first victim. Send what units you have left to feast on the barbs down south and earn some extra experience where you can (and general points too? Can't recall if barbs count toward this). Leave lame cities of your other victims behind to keep in the spirit.

Question - are plantations allowed for the resources?

 

[madscientist]

Looks like he still has copper in the capital culture borders. He'll hook that up again quickly and be a pain. Not to mention the whiny sacrifices-to-be wailing about their "motherland".

Take the city and break the rule for this first victim. Send what units you have left to feast on the barbs down south and earn some extra experience where you can (and general points too? Can't recall if barbs count toward this). Leave lame cities of your other victims behind to keep in the spirit.

Question - are plantations allowed for the resources?

Yes, we can utilize all our worker options except cottages (one rule I will probably not break as I do want to demonstrate the SE).

I am definitely leaning more towards knocking Ragnar out. MONTY sort of likes the idea of being the only agressive leader on the continent!!!

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Monty is always right

 

[absimiliard]

Monty is always right

Except when he whispers about sending a trail of individual units, one by one, in a caravan across the continent to attack someone stupid.

Though even then he's right about attacking the guy, if only for bully points.

He's just wrong about not making a stack.

-abs

 

[Kanorin]

Wait until we get catapults to minimize the loss of our experienced troops. We can continue warring or sue for peace while we wait.

Did you just say minimize loss of troops? Monty would say, "If any warriors retreat from battle, they shall be sacrificed. Any warriors that are lost in battle were not worthy and would have been sacrificed anyway (so no loss there). Also, any warriors who do not bring loot for the great empire shall be sacrificed."

Take the Viking city and sacrifice/enslave its population down to size 1 to cleanse it. Only then can it be worthy of the Aztec empire.

 

[absimiliard]

I know why Monty's crazy now.

He constantly hears voices in his head telling him what to do.

"Kill that other player off, they're just an AI ....... wipe that city away, massacre everyone ........... demand crazy things from people and hope they declare war on you ......"

The voice are, of course, us.

-abs

 

[madscientist]

OK folks, let's get a few things straight. I am calling the military shots here and the Aztec people are doing the researching and building. MONTY is essentially a figure head who we are trying to elevate to a victory!!!

So the bottomline is, we will be agressive and pillage away but will run an organized and intelligent war. MONTY may be crazy but he is not that stupid to just throw away my solid military advice.

And the critical thing right now is Ragnar is the most dangerous of the AIs we met, and the one we definitely want to be rid of. If that means waiting for cats, well then MONTY has to rant and drowl in teh corner and bide his time. We will let him have his human sacrifices on what is left of Nidros though.

Did I mention the number of posts and views appear to be much higher for this MONTY game than the peaceful SAL game. We are a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters aren't we

 

[absimiliard]

Yeah, we are a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters.

I will submit there's a solid logical foundation to the argument that eliminating Ragnar now is better than later.

As with most SEs you will be getting a lot of your early money to run your econ from conquest. Some of that gold will support additional cities, some will support distance from your capitol, and some will support units. With most aggressive games you hit a point where your army is the most expensive thing you have, and pruning it by razing some cities is a good thing in that it both raises (razes *LOL*) gold and reduces support costs.

Right now you are supporting a large, for the time, army sitting right on Ragnar's doorstep. You would gain advantage both from having Nidaros, and from reducing your troop upkeep costs. Finally you would also gain benefit from finishing off Ragnar once and for all, heck, maybe even before he meets someone and gives you a -1 You Declared War on Our Friend penalty.

If you give him peace and wait all you're doing is reducing casualties, and risking him befriending someone and giving you a penalty when you DOW on him later. You don't want either of those things.

So I say, logically, if you can take Nidaros now, you should. Forget the casualty rates, much of this sort of early army never gets upgraded in the end anyway. If you can take it, take it. The worst that'll happen is you prune away the inexperienced units, thus reducing your upkeep, and give the assault on weakened enemy units to your high-experience units. This should give you less, higher-quality, troops.

If you don't think you have the army to take Nidaros you'll have to hold off until you do. Nothing worse than a failed assault that leaves Ragnar time to heal and promote his units. So if you can't take him in a massive human wave attack then you need to hold off, until you have more units or until catapults.

But if you think a human-wave assault with tens of thousands of screaming Aztecs climbing wooden ladders to die scaling the walls of Nidaros thus weakening the defenders for the follow on waves of Jaguar Warriors has a chance of success, then you should try it. The advantages in gaining Nidaros now, getting rid of Ragnar for good now, AND reducing you troop count by killing off low-XP units, are all worth the assault.

..... but only if it can work.

-abs

 

[Kanorin]

OK folks, let's get a few things straight. I am calling the military shots here and the Aztec people are doing the researching and building. MONTY is essentially a figure head who we are trying to elevate to a victory!!!

So the bottomline is, we will be agressive and pillage away but will run an organized and intelligent war. MONTY may be crazy but he is not that stupid to just throw away my solid military advice.

You can't elevate a figurehead such as MONTY without employing some of his crazy tactics and tendencies. Otherwise, the Aztec people will not believe he is at the helm of power and will not fear him at all.

 

[Carabodes]

I knew this rule was going to be a toughy.

That's not tough, beause:

Rules:
1) First Rule, being Monty we reserve the right to discard any rule at our convenience

By that rule we're allowed to follow absimiliards advice.
Down with my viking ancestors! (They're history, anyhow.) Go get'em!

 

[madscientist]

MONTY the Mad Scientist: Part III

OK, you all want war, you want bloodshed, you want death to the Viking scum. Well we have just what you ordered. We also cracked the whip a bit to the delight of our fearless leader (The Aztec God will be pleased), Monty we have no god yet (Get me one). Next round boss, next round.

Thei round is fairly short in turns although it was a bit of work to finish off Ragnar. Simple but took alot of our Jaguars to do even with cats, glad we teched that first, even with some good odds. Now I am not one to complain about the AI cheating, but too often I have found attacking a fairly mature city after Cat bombardment that I lose to many battles. I have always wondered if there is a bug somewhere. Nevertheless, we acheived our goal.

SO here it goes


Not wanting to lose our valuable Aztec warriors we declare peace with Ragnar. (NO NO, KILL HIM) Shut up!



And park our nice stack nect to the copepr while we finish teching Construction.



we wait until Ragnar kindly brings his worker rightnear the stack to declare war. A free worker and we immediately trash the copper mine.

We whip out one cat and build the other while sending our stack off to Nidros

Also we find someone who wants to trade, well make demands



Gave him what he wanted then made a nice trade



And soon after



THE critical wonder to the SE. MOnty was veyr happy and views it as the mother of all Sacrificial Alters! Now alot of players say the pyramids are not needed to run a SE. I am not that good and pretty much need them. We switch to representation which also gives us the needed +3 happiness!!

Our stack and cats arrive,




Bombard/suicide cats/lose about 7 jags.



I hope all of you bloodthirsty savages are satisfied not (GOOD JOB, WHERE ARE THE SACRIFICES). Well, Nidros was pop 1 so we had to wait awhile, but we soon whipped a monument which made the boss delighted!

The map, as you see we have room for two very nice cities in the north but we will wait



We build a settler to settle more south and push the other AIs borders.

Also to further train our Aztec warriors and give old Monty something to do we send a stack to raze some barb cities



we took another barb city to the north and find Peter to our west and starting to Encroach on us (sharpen the cerimonial blades minions). Indeed.

I should say our tech path after contruction: HB/Med/Priesthood/CoL. Yes folks as of the save we can build sacrificial alters!!!!


Now this is the land to our south. Two very good city spots to further cut off the AI from us. First the middle one with the iron/jumbos/pigs. The coast area is another excellent site one the jungles are cut down.

Another Russian trade



Our next city



And another Barb city. I considered for a while wether to keep it, but figured it would difficult to defend since Peter is likely our next source of sacrifice victums.



SOme more trades





And our empire, note lot's of room for new cities



we saved at this point, with currency as the next tech on the menu.

Our status







So what are we to do next. We already have techs and resources for good city assaults: cats/war elephants/Jags/axes. Peter looks like a good victum but we certainly need to restrain the economy

1) Tech currency, build alters, get to the happy caps and run scientists for the SE (remeber only scientist specialists).

2) Tech towards Macemen

3) Built a whole lot of troops and start pillaging AI's for cash. Anybody have a problem with hitting Peter first???

4) DO we assign a religion yet (remember we cannot switch out) and can only use theocracy.

At 290 BC I think we are in pretty good shape.

 

[Bobbalouie]

I'm glad you took out Ragnar, my brains wanted it, my rule following-ness didn't. If for nor other reason, now you don't have centuries of motherland yearning.

Take Hinduism. Peter's Hindu, and since he's likely the next target, saves you the trouble of converting some of his cities. Also, Willem has theocracy, so he's likely to get the AP, not to mention he has the holy city wayyyy in the south, so Monty won't have to worry about them pesky gods so much.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

What are you doing???

Mad MOnty indeed, Trying to run a specialist economy, and your NOT building the most important building for it, the GRANARY. Whip in Granaries..then next you build a SACRIFICIAL ALTER. This will reduce maintance costs and unhappyness (No unhappyness allowed in Aztecia)

Build order ( New or conqured city, Grannary, Alter, Library, worker THEN)

Then and only then do you build Libriaries. (whip them, let the alters run red)

Building War Elephants WITHOUT a Stable....

I'd go Shinny in Capital, (It will Bedazzel Monty) and build the hanging Gardends. If your so worried about whipping away Citizens, why not get a few free ones.

Grannaries can be whipped after 1 turn of building, Alters may take a few more depending on cities. GROWTH, HEALTH, ALTERS.

Tech Currency and DEMAND gold from your victi...errr Neighbours.

But first shinny capital, build hanging gardens, and then tech Lit, for GLibrary

AND if you ever get a Random event of a set back in Research, SACRIFICE ALL THOSE USLESS SCIENTISTS.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

MORE WORKERS....

Plus I've found they seem to work best in groups of 3

 

[Killroyan]

Bah put those workers to WORK WORK WORK. What are those useless slaves doing? I propose to get the two nothern slave camps up so you can whip a little more. But nice going on Ragnar. It is still BC and you have a good empire up and the most dangerous advisary out of the way.

 

[madscientist]

Bah put those workers to WORK WORK WORK. What are those useless slaves doing? I propose to get the two nothern slave camps up so you can whip a little more. But nice going on Ragnar. It is still BC and you have a good empire up and the most dangerous advisary out of the way.

Yes, yes ,yes. Two northen cities, they are on the que once we straighten the economy with currency and alters. THe sourthen coastal juble city first to finish the AI block.

The most important thing is we terminated Ragnar!

 

[madscientist]

I'm glad you took out Ragnar, my brains wanted it, my rule following-ness didn't. If for nor other reason, now you don't have centuries of motherland yearning.

Take Hinduism. Peter's Hindu, and since he's likely the next target, saves you the trouble of converting some of his cities. Also, Willem has theocracy, so he's likely to get the AP, not to mention he has the holy city wayyyy in the south, so Monty won't have to worry about them pesky gods so much.

That is what I was thinking. Peter is the next target and probably the weaker of the three. William can be a decent war-monger especially with agressive AI turned on and I want to keep in a friend until the end. HC is the techer and a Dutch/Incan war is a good thing. Perhaps a bit of bribery down those lines is in order.