MS` XXIII - Frederick

[jinxed]

Sorry, but I'm still busy today, so just a fast answer for now.

@jinxed
Welcome to the Civ Fanatics fora! I hope you have fun here

Spoiler :

First, I think you made some small mistakes so far. They aren't big, but from monarch on, mistakes start to cost a bit more.
You shouldn't have researched sailing, unless you wanted to go for the GLh, but then early warring becomes more difficult. Also, considering that you had copper in your empire, you had no need for archery, so you should have teched something else.

About the GP farm: getting GMs isn't optimal, and not if you wish to settle all of them. Some GMs are good, but the most common SE is with scientists (and I'd say it's the most common for a reason), or, with leaders such as the two Egyptian ones, SE with priests. I think you'd be better served with GS. (the biggest point with them being bulbing techs, but only bulb important ones)

As for diplomacy: neither of your remaining neighbours attacks at pleased. Try to give them some excess resources and to be in the same religion as them. Be careful that Hannibal is a warmonger, so you either get him pleased with you before he decides to go to war, or you get ready for war. I'd advise the first choice, since you're already in a position where building your empire up is a better choice.

Last, techs: you've researched Poly, and I don't know why, but I do know that the only good application this can still have for you is allowing the building of the Parthenon and researching literature, which allows building the GL. Thus, I would research aesthetics next, start building the Parthenon (not in a GP farm), and when it becomes possible, trade aesthetics for alphabet and other important techs you might need.

Try to have at least two production cities which should have barracks and pump out some troops.

~~~
These are from a SE perspective. If you want cottages, monarchy is better, but I'd also say you've wasted too much time warring if you want to go that route. You'd be better of capturing cottage cities from your neighbours later.
Anyway, I'm only a student monarch player, so take these with a grain of salt.

Spoiler :

Thanks for the comments civtiger. I agree with you on my tech choices. Garbage. I took sailing because of a stupid brainfart. However, this should allow some earlier resource trading than would probably be possible (i should have at least one surplus soon) and I am building a galley to defend the seafood in my next city's BFC. I'm still not sure why I took archery though . However, I initially started up the poly path because I was going to go priesthood for a shot at oracle (even though i think meditation opens up priesthood as well?). of course, I soon after realized DUH! oracle has already been built! should've known that would be the case after spending so much time on an early war. but, in short, dumb tech decisions. hopefully salvageable though. i think it is, it may just put me behind the tech race for a bit.

I understand your arguments, assuming the SE, and they totally make sense. I usually shy away from SEs though unless the food on the continent is really good *AND* I have a shot at securing the pyramids. While the food on this continent appears to be pretty darn good so far, the 'mids seem out of the question at this point, so I'm leaning towards cottaging everything 'cept my GP farm. This is why i mentioned running merchants. They could pay the bills while I run the slider as close to 100% as possible with a commerce for science in the majority of my cities. still, I know running SE would probably make it easier to REX since dropping the slider wouldn't affect tech rate as much. I will think on this a bit.

Still torn on techs. I'm not usually big on early wonders. Aethetics/Parthenon would help justify my choice down the poly line, and i know aesthetics is excellent trade bait. course, this would all mean next techs would be writing/aesth/alpha. Mono/Monarchy would mean OR for a religion spam to help with happiness and infrastructure building. Monarchy would mean happiness to grow my cities and work more tiles. I think either choice would work, though the first would probably help keep me at tech parity a bit better thanks to tech trades.

i will heed your diplo advice as well and open borders ASAP (i usually do anyways). I will go hindu to help relations with Hanny too...

thanks for the advice. will post an update as soon as i decide on the best way to proceed and get a chance to play the next round.

 

[Ghpstage]

@jinxed

Spoiler :

Susa should have been burnt, its nothing but a drain on resources now and won't be anything else till IW.

Your economy is at breaking point, don't go settling any more cities till its fixed. Writing is the tech you should be heading for now, OB with Justin will give you a nice commerce boost as a river already connects you and it will let him send missioanries to you . Libraries will be a great help in getting you to Monarchy.
I wouldn't go for Aesthetics, Monarch AIs don't really tech fast enough to make trading it reasonable and Justin is usually more interested in religion (Theo) to get Alpha. The liklihood of you being able to trade for anyhting with Aesthetics is extremely slim so I would instead go for Priesthood->Monarchy after Writing, forget Mono for now, its twice as costly as Priesthood.

You need to reconsider what your workers are doing, Susa is already connected to your trade network so it doesn't need a road, and theres no point roading to the eastern hill city site as theres no city there yet and even when you get another settler you can't afford to place it! You'd be better off geting them to spam cottages.

 

[drlake]

@jinxed

Spoiler :

Welcome to CFC, and to Monarch level!

I'm with Ghpstage, you're expanding too fast for your current level of technology. Right now, you'll have to drop your tech slider to 20% or so before you get to Writing (7 turns to writing, 5 turns to bankrupt). If you pop out those settlers you've got building and actually build cities, your income may well be negative at 100% commerce, and if that happens before you get Writing you are truly screwed.

At the moment, it is critically important that you get Writing and get some Libraries built so you can run scientist specialists BEFORE you expand any further. As your cities get bigger, your financial situation will improve somewhat but you're not going to have much research capacity unless you either manage to continue conquering cities for loot (that won't last long, though) or you get some Libraries built.

 

[jinxed]

@ ghpstage & drlake

thanks for all the good tips guys. I've played a little bit today, and I'm somewhere around 100 BC I think. I will post a complete summary after I play a few more turns tonight...

Spoiler :

...but I'll tell you guys I did go with writing/alpha (prior to reading your posts which confirmed for me just now that I made the right move). I also put some wonders in the queues of Berlin and Persepolis that I knew I wouldn't win in order to convert some shields to wealth and finance a little more deficit research. After writing, I switched to libraries in these same two cities and chopped them a bit. Running four scientists helped quite a bit, and only ten or so turns yielded a GS, a turn before getting alpha. I worked as many commerce tiles as I could to expedite alphabet via deficit research. Got a critical trade from Hanny: Alpha for Meditation/IW!! finally, I can start clearing some DAMN JUNGLE! Now, I'm debating on whether to settle/bulb Maths/or build an academy with that GS. Maths might get me a few more tech trades as well as accelerate my research towards currency (which I'm almost set on as my next tech since my economy is not yet out of the woods) while settling/academy will give more beakers in the long-haul.

All in all, Alpha was a huge relief. Not only did it allow me to catch up a bit, but it set my mind at ease. My neighbors, while certainly ahead in techs, aren't uncatchable at this point.

Anyways, I'll try to play a bit more tonight, fully recover my economy and fill in my other city sites, and post the results.

Oh, unrelated noob question, how do I post those nice, big and pretty screenies like all the sample game posters do? (instead of the low-res thumbnails in my first post )

-jinxed

 

[drlake]

@ ghpstage & drlake
Oh, unrelated noob question, how do I post those nice, big and pretty screenies like all the sample game posters do? (instead of the low-res thumbnails in my first post )

-jinxed

Most of us use a picture hosting service, like Photobucket (photobucket.com). It's free, and after you've uploaded your screenies to it you'll see that it provides various tags for the screenie. Insert the IMG tags in the post you are making, and presto! you've inserted a larger image.

 

[Hunkney Tolpeck]

I managed to win a domination victory in 1922, scoring a little over 40K points.

Spoiler :

My strategy was pretty ol'school German. Beat up the guys next door and stoke the fires of industry. My starting continent was vasselized by the 1600s in a series of wars ending with Hanni that lasted about 200years. He and his elephants took a beating trying to stop my cannons and rifles.
The next two land masses took a good deal longer. Churchill was one stubborn baby-looking Britt. He was by far the most difficult to break. In fact the last 100 years of bloodshed were a result of me having to take nearly every coastal city he had, including his distant capital. I'm not really sure why he was such an issue. It must have been his massive allotment of territory. Fun fact! His redcoats got the dubious 'Most killed' stat according to my end game info.
I think the most valuable choices I made were all early game decisions.
1st: A focus on cottages in the floodplains north west of our start that financed an early tech lead. I was able to fit one medium production city and a cash cow up there that cut the AIs off from settling north of our capital and severely limited their growth.
2nd: Using the Oracle to found Confucianism with CoL. It was doubly useful as it enabled me to quickly whip cheap courthouses early on in the game. Plus, I was able to keep my research slider around 70+ until I had representation / mercantilism to pull the weight.
3rd: Waiting to war until I had cannons. It didn't take long to go cannon/musket all over the planet. After getting to Liberalism I to B-lined my way to steel, then straight on to rifles. Waiting led to some of the most efficient warring I've ever managed. My local AIs were all (mosly) medieval and gave up easily. Until I landed in England it was smooth sailing. Then I had to murder the afore mentioned Redcoats.
All in all I'm pleased. GG

I've included to post-win save.

 

[jinxed]

Spoiler :

Well, was going to post a more thorough update on my progress with this game but after playing to around 600 ad, I had disaster strike. Just after teching machinery and startig to pump out macemen like crazy, Justin DoW for the second time. Thus time he had cats and phants. I sent some units over to capture his carelessly guarded banana/horse city and was successful. However, despite scrambling units like crazy to protect Susa, he capped with a massive SOD. While I could possibly shift my forces over from his captured city over to try and retake Susa, I think this war might mean game over for me. I was so disgusted last night that I had to walk away from my computer lest I threw my monitor across the room. I may try to reload an earlier autosave, switch to slavery, and pump out a bunch of units, but regardless, I think my chance of a legitimate win (ie continue from last save and slug it out in a war where I'm already pretty out numbered) are slim to none. I know the other continent is way ahead on techs (liberalism is certainly a lost cause). Ithink the big lesson from this game was that I needed to keep at least one city devoted to spamming units at alltimes. In my greed to tech faster (and get CS/machines Asap) I put several of my nice hammer cities on wealth building. It yielded an awesome tech rate but of course I sacificed way too muh production and military. Had I spammed military in at least one or two cities, I may have even prevented a DoW, or at least held him off better when war broke out. Oh well... Back to the drawing board.

 

[drlake]

Jinxed:

That update should be in spoilers, since it contains information about the AIs and strategic situation in the game.

Spoiler :

My game is on pause, as well. I was at war with Darius and ready to make a run at Persepolis when he capitulated to Justinian. While I may be able to pull the game out, I decided it was a good time to take a break...

 

[vranasm]

I picked up this map again after some months, playing monarch save on monarch epic to 10AD.

Spoiler :

To my surprise I rexed so-so, I didnt crash economy too hard at any point and got something like 10 cities.
I have all important economic techs (currency, writing, monarchy). Problem is happy cap but I am now in HR, will build some archers for cap to use more the cottages while building GL.
I have no dedicated unit pump in sight. Don't see there production site, probably focused too much on economy and non crashing that i probably misplaced some riverside cottages.

so if anyone has some input I will welcome it.