[BTS] Need Help on Monarch

[crashmon]

740 AD

• 1 turn from MOM, 1 Turn from Paper
• 1 Miss on way to Coanda, 2 miss built next turn go to NZ, 3rd Miss is 3 turns out
• Found Hammy, he is also very behind
• Colossus was finally built, so I have about 538 Gold, so can run 4 turns at 100% (outside of Golden Age, I know that will change once we start the GA)
• Got Phil from Zara, Const from Gilg
• Issy is not happy now as I traded with her worst enemy... but she not likely to get conqusta's to bother me this game
• Also done some getting gold by tech trades as well
• begged 20G from Jules, so have PT with Rome
• If I wanted to stir things up I could bribe Jules on Izzy

Save is attached...

So next turn I start the Golden age......
What should I run in each city and why, also when should I switch to pacifism, as when I do wont be able to build Missi's unless I build monastry's first.

Again thanks for all help so far

 

[coanda]

A Golden Age does four things.

• Every tile that generates at least 1 commerce generates an extra commerce
• Every tile that generates at least 1 hammer generates an extra hammer
• Every specialist generates 3 extra Great People Points per turn
• Anarchy-free civic and religion swaps (no change for a Spiritual leader, but pretty useful for other leaders).

This means generally at the start of a golden age you want to look through your cities and think about how many specialists each one can sustain. A city that has high food surplus is trying to generate Great People, so it's running as many specialists as it can. To pair with this, you swap into Pacifism the same turn you start the Golden Age (a Spiritual leader might under some circumstances swap sooner; for non-SPI leaders you want the anarchy-free civic swap to get there). This is the biggest priority; you'll plan for this first. Lower-food cities, which can't generate Great People, will instead focus on just working a lot of good tiles while the tiles have higher yield.

Thebes wants to hop off that plainshill this turn and work the inland lake again (+2 food, putting it at 16 stored next turn). When it passes the pigs to Krikav it will start losing 3 food per turn. So you'll stay with pigs in Thebes for 4 turns of golden age (getting up to 24 food stored), then switch to working the cottage north of it and lose 3 food per turn for the remaining 8 turns of golden age (down to 0 food stored at the end). That lets Krikav spend as much time working high-food tiles as possible, so it can run as many specialists as possible. You're probably about 20 turns from your military attack, and this is your highest-hammer city, so it get a barracks. If you're going for cuirassiers, it should also get a stables; if cannons, that's pointless of course. Then it could make some horse archers or catapults (for upgrade to Cuirassiers or cannons, respectively) while you wait; because you're going to have probably two Great Merchants, and might shut down research for like ten turns to rushbuy units or upgrade them, pre-building some units will speed up the attack.

Krikav should take that farm back from Sampsa and work it this turn. It can also take the plains cottage temporarily from Thebes and work it for a single pre-Golden-Age turn. That gets it up to 33 food stored when the golden age starts. Once it gets the pigs it will be working pigs, corn, 2x farm, floodplains cottage, and 7 specialists (-1 food per turn for 8 turns); until then it has 25 food to burn over 4 turns, so it can work 2 turns of cottage, floodplains cottage, corn, 2x farm, 7x specialist (-10 food, 23 left), 2 turns replacing that grass cottage with an eighth specialist (-14 food, 9 left), and 8 turns of replacing that 8th specialist with the pigs (-8 food, 1 left). That's 86 specialist-turns, which with Pacifism and Golden Age is 774 GPP. Add that to the 161 it has already, 935 GPP. It'll make your fourth GP (-400), and have 535 GPP stored by the end. Normally on the last turn of a golden age you swap your civics again to whatever you want long-term, but since you're Spiritual you could stay in Pacifism a couple extra turns to finish off that last Great Person after the golden age ends. It will generate just 2 hammers per turn during the golden age (and for a few turns after while trying to finish that last Great Person), so what it builds isn't really that important. Wealth is fine. I'd go with merchant specs here.

Noble Zarkon will be at 30 food surplus as the golden age starts. Steal one floodplains cottage from Sampsa and work it for 6 turns (crabs, floodplains cottage, 5x scientist, lose 24 food), then steal a second and work that for 6 turns as well (crabs, 2x floodplains cottage, 4x scientist, lose the other 6 food). Get a missionary there ASAP - divert the one headed to Coanda - so it benefits from Pacifism. 486 GPP generated there, adding to 90 already for 576. It won't quite generate a Great Person during the golden age, but it'll get real close. It can just build wealth, it won't really have production during this. Merchant specs here for certain.

With it passing food tiles to Noble Zarkon and Krikav, Sampsa doesn't have the food to generate GP itself. Try to just work the best tiles you can without the city starving away - remember to take 2F or 3F tiles that are not being worked by NZ or Krikav and use them with Sampsa. Good spot to get a barracks, and either catapults or stable + horse archers.

Jnebbe keeps growing onto coastal tiles; if it hits happy cap, swap those coastal tiles for merchant specialists. Wealth is fine here.

Gumbolt can add merchant specialists as it grows. Also, that grass tile really ought to be cottaged by now! Barracks and either catapults or stable + horse archers.

Coanda is fine as-is. Maybe get a barracks and either catapults or stable + horse archers there.

Lymond can't quite catch up to the other cities in GPP generation; Krikav will beat it to 400, Fippy to 500, NZ to 600, Krikav again to 700, Fish Man to 800. By the time it has 900, you'll probably have won the game. So it doesn't actually have a use for GPP. Take up the unused plains-hill mine from Thebes, and otherwise grow on coast during the golden age. Keep slowly building galleons here. There might be some micro refinements you can do with passing the grass cottage to Thebes so Krikav can maybe eke out an extra turn or two on the pigs and get a few more GPP, I didn't look at that carefully.

Fippy is the second city that will generate a Great Person during the Golden Age. Work 4 coast tiles this turn to get 8 more food, 27 stored as the Golden Age starts. Pigs, clams, 6x specialist for 6 turns; pigs, clams, horse, 5x specialist for 6 turns. 594 GPP generated, plus 78 already; it'll spend 500 on your 5th GP and have 172 left over. It can build wealth, and I'd go with scientist specialists here (you'd prefer to get a Great Scientist as your fifth so you can bulb Liberalism).

Fish Man can work another plains tile this turn. Upgrade that galley to a galleon, send it north towards Fippy to scoop up the missionary being finished in Sampsa. Bring that missionary back. That'll give you 4 turns during the golden age where you are not benefiting from Pacifism in that city because you're waiting on the religion; finish up the lighthouse then start working fish, clams, 4x merchant. It's not going to get a Great Person (or even close to one) during this golden age, but being able to run 4 specialists non-stop for the rest of the game means it will slowly pull ahead of places like Lymond that only run 2 or 3 and will probably get you a Great Merchant later on in the game. Load the worker onto the galleon and drop him on the continent just north as you sail by, he can walk over to Etruscan to help improve there (hopefully you won't run into a barb, a little judicious repositioning of your trireme could help fogbust some of those tiles to cut down the chance but with two barb cities and most of the land filled you're probably already at the barb limit on this continent with no wandering barbs left. After it finishes the lighthouse this city can build wealth.

If you play this right, Fippy, Sampsa, Noble Zarkon, Krikav, and Thebes should all have essentially 0 food left in their storage by the time the golden age ends, you get two Great People, a third on the verge of finishing in Noble Zarkon, and a fourth not long after that in Krikav - which would give you about 4500-5000 gold from trade missions plus a Liberalism bulb if you get 3 Great Merchants and a Great Scientist.

You're going to be able to get Feudalism off Zara Yaqob pretty soon. Don't trade that around to other AIs; it's not certain, but there's at least a chance you can mop up Zara Yaqob with Cuirassiers and still have time to hit Charlemagne or Gilgamesh before they tech Feudalism themselves.

 

[lymond]

Good stuff from Coanda.

I think the catapults or stable+HAs statement coanda made was dependent on whether you go Curs or Steel, for clarification.

One thing you can do with this gpp generation is actually let the potentially slower cities pop their great folks before the city(ies) that can generate faster. This is a bit more of an advanced concept and requires some serious micromanagement. It's a combo of balancing out the number of specialists, food bar/growth and...very important...city priority. What I mean by city priority is that say Thebes and Krik were both at 1t from popping a great person. Thebes would have the priority based on having been settled before Krik. This whole idea can involve a bit of math too as some cities have wonders that are producing gpp besides just that from specialists.

You can ignore that for now and just take it first come first serve. However, it is something to think about in the future. Basically, another way to look at it is you have some cities pumping gpp, but some are slower than others simply due to the amount of specialists they can run...and that fact certain cities have been producing some gpp over a period of time before the golden age by running some specs and having some gpp from wonders. You start the Golden age and mass gpp pumping...pump pump pump..but as you get closer to City X hitting the target for the next GP, slow it down some. A GP is earned every 100gpp. If City X is getting close to ...say...300gpp, slow it down and let the others catch up and so forth. (this is all example an over-simpflication) Say..for instance...City Y is now 1t from 300GPP ( and you want it to pop now) and City Y was settled before City X. You can have City X max out its GPP as City Y takes precedence on popping the GP.


The point of all this, is that by closely monitoring the gpp in your cities like this, especially in a golden age and/or pacifism, you can get more GPs in a short amount of time. Sometimes within matter of a turn or 2 if a city can really produce a lot of gpp.

Look at your cities and note the amount of actual gpp they produce during the golden age/paci.

Lastly, not sure if coanda mentioned this as I just scanned his post, but remember that you are going to max gpp as much as possible in most cities that are pumping during the golden age. This means cities will go into starving mode to run more using the food storage at that pop level (but keep track that the a city does not lose pop...adjust as needed).

This is why I suggest during your last session to start maxxing food in cities. The reason was a) to gain pop b) to max food storage. In fact as you get close to the golden age it is actually better to stall a city from the next pop point and rather hold/max growth to get the food bucket as close too or at max....like 34/34. Then you start using the food to max gpp when the golden age starts....heck I even do this outside golden ages in some cases. The flip side is that say a city is ready to grow right before you run the golden age, it grows with about half-full food bin which is quite a bit less that a full bin, leaving less food to starve down on while maxxing specialists.

One more thing, while you are maxxing gpp, always work your food specials...never take citizens off those tiles, but pretty much every other tile is fair game - mines, cottages, coast, etc. Your basically finding a balance between maxxing the gpp and the starving rate (notice how that changes the less food is worked)

 

[crashmon]

Hi Guys

Sorry could not get to play yesterday.

Have played one turn, set up cities as recommended (I think)

Before go any farther, please take a look

• Tech'ing Edu
• Got some more gold for old techs from others
• will be attacking Barbs' soon
• Building stables and barracks... Will build both as will probably send muskets as well as cuirs to conquer Charle + Other continents
• only need Cuirs for Zars

Save attached

 

[coanda]

Looks good.

I'd pass Lymond's grass cottage to the capital (work it instead of a grass hill mine), that gets +1 food per turn to the capital. Other than that, the tiles all look good although you'll need to keep checking and adjusting as the golden age goes on (e.g., you'll want to be passing the pigs from Thebes to Krikav in a couple turns). Remember that the big goal is trying to get as many specialist-turns as possible in Noble Zarkon, Krikav, and Fippy by using up stored food without actually losing pop due to starvation.

The harbor in Jnebbe's build queue is absolutely not worth it. Harbors give additional trade route commerce equal to 50% of base trade route commerce. Which, for a small city like Jnebbe, is going to be 1.0 commerce per route, so +50% on two routes is giving you about 1 more commerce per turn (could be 0 or 2 from rounding issues). 80 hammers for 0-2 more commerce per turn is not a good deal. Especially at this point in the game, when you're rapidly closing in on your key techs; 20 turns from now you'll probably be ready to shut down research and just get as much gold as possible to spam out units for a bit. Drop that out of the queue.

Remember to switch Fish Man to working 4 specialists in three turns when it finishes the lighthouse and gets Confucianism, and you might even spend a few turns at the end of the golden age not working the clam and running five specialists.

You want the barracks + stable even for Cuirassiers alone - that lets them start with 5 XP for two promotions off the bat. Muskets aren't really worth mixing in - Longbows are significantly hammer-cheaper and almost as good for garrisoning cities; you don't want to slow Cuirassiers down waiting on muskets. And without the support of siege, muskets aren't very good attacking units. If you end up deciding to spend time in Nationhood you might draft some muskets just because it's an easy way of turning food into hammers, in which case you can use them to help garrison cities and free up Cuirassiers.

There's no huge urgency on this, but now that I think about it, at some point it might be worth producing two Spy units somewhere (maybe Fippy, Jnebbe). You really only need one cultural revolt on Zara Yaqob, in Aksum. His other cities are either not on hills, not worth taking, or far enough away that you'll probably leave them and just pivot to hit Charlemagne a few turns earlier. One spy would likely suffice, two gives a bit of redundancy in case one gets caught and spies are fairly cheap units.

 

[crashmon]

Ok, so we now about 1/2 way through Golden age

• Just switched Pigs to Krik from Thebes
• Just captured Estruscan (soon to be renamed) from Barbs
• 1 turn from Edu
• Have Feud from Zara
• First slight annoyance, Krik gave me a GSci not a GMerc
• So save Gsci for Lib bulb?

Going ok so far, starting to build HA's for a later upgrade to Cuirs

 

[coanda]

Working that inland lake instead of the plains-cottage might have let you swap Thebes a bit earlier and get a bit more food to Krikav, but as of now it's at 24 food stored and will starve 24 in the remaining turns so that's perfect going forward.

Noble Zarkon will need to work a single turn of one grass cottage at some point during the golden age.

Sampsa is going to need to take a farm from Krikav in two turns to avoid starving. Move Krikav onto a grass cottage when that happens, and I think it'll eventually need to pull a merchant off onto a second grass cottage to avoid starving.

Fippy is... working artist specialists? I'd put it on merchants now that you got a Great Scientist from Krikav, although you could find a use for a second Great Scientist if that's what you get. Eventually it's going to need to move a specialist onto the horse tile to avoid starving.

Other cities are all working good tiles/specialists.

Production-wise, there's some tweaks to be made. Fish Man will need a military garrison unit in 12 turns or less. Preferably a war chariot (cheapest military unit you have available), preferably not built in a city that has committed to a barracks and stable - you want those making horse archers for eventual upgrade to cuirassiers. I think Gumbolt could get it in a timely manner if you finish the current galleon, build a war chariot, load the chariot on the galleon and sail it to Fish Man.

Coanda should spam horse archers when it finishes the barracks. It'd be better if Sampsa was not the one building your spy, it has the barracks and stable and you want it making units that will benefit from the XP. Pick a city that doesn't have barracks/stable yet for spies if you can - maybe Fippy, Krikav, or Noble Zarkon? Jnebbe should definitely not be queuing up catapults - they won't be able to keep up with Cuirassiers, which makes them nearly useless.

While you wait for Etruscan to come out of cultural revolt, I'd drop a road NW of the gems 2N1W of it; that will be useful later on for mobility.

Nationalism after Education finishes, so you can bulb + tech Liberalism for Military Tradition.

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it a Liberalism bulb isn't really in the cards because you got Astronomy, which means Machinery, which means Printing Press then Scientific Method take priority. I forgot about that. You'll need to self-tech Liberalism, still a little faster than self-teching Military Tradition but not a huge savings.

 

[lymond]

why the artists in My City?

I assume Lymo is just storing food at the moment then will switch to specialists.

ToA was built by Rome. I'm going to assume that it is in the city of Rome, which is not visible at the moment. Get your Galleons in position on the very East near Coanda to ferry/chain GMs over to Rome. (send one 5 tiles to the East in the ocean)

Gift Compass to JC right now in hopes that he builds a Harbor in Rome by the time you get GMs over there. Harbor will boost trade mission income. ToA adds 200g to any mission yield.

GS is fine. You can hold onto it or bulb Printing Press. (lib bulb is out of the running now, but tech not that expensive really)

Sampsa mine should be on specialist

Personally, I'd have Thebes running at least 2 specs in this golden age. too many points in there already not to try for something.

Lymo mine should be a merchant. Next turn switch to merchants up to +1 food surplus + avoid growth. Next turn run all merchants but food.

Lymo should produce the next great person. My City can be slowed a bit once it hits 1t to produce GP so that Lymo can catch up. Lymo pops and My City should pop it's soon after.

(you really waste a lot of gpp potential in a golden age/paci by running mines)

Coanda had some decent gpp potential here as well..too bad it did not get a conf mish.

you might want to send your extra warrior in Sampsa down to Fish Man.

trade pigs to Hammy for wheat...net gain and you have another pig to hook up.

why is jnebbe building catapults?

 

[crashmon]

artists was a mistake... should be mechants, have fixed. However only switched this turn so no harm done as it was caught before end of turn

 

[lymond]

actually, NZ may be the best city to pop next GP..then Lymo..then My City. My City can get close to 1t pop and always take off a specialist or two to slow it and then stall completely until the other cities pop.

keep in mind too that you can stay in Paci a bit after the golden age to keep gpp high.

Thebes is technically also very close to being able to pop a guy, but this will be a GE most likely. GE not bad but I think we want GMs here mostly short term.

Keep in mind that order of settling is:

My City
Lymo
NZ

that means all things equal gpp wise, if these cities were all 1t from popping, My City would take precedence. It'd work better if that was reversed order ..ha..but that's just the way it is.

Hmm...if my math is correct NZ can gain a turn on finishing GP by losing cottage in two turns from the point of your save, then add cottage pack on last turn before it would starve.

(hmmm again...another school of thought is let Thebes pop a GE first here and use it to 1t Taj in a city of 10 pop or higher to keep the golden age gravy train going)

actually that would work out very well, as Thebe takes precedence over all cities so when Thebes is at 1t to pop GE, all cities can max out gpp.

 

[crashmon]

Just a question

Rome looks like being a long way away...
Gilgi looks much closer. I know we would get a lot more money from rome, but the travel time to get there even if chaining would be a bit longer than to one of the cities Gilga has.

I guess however if we go to rome its more time to build more horse archers / Currs and mass upgrade

Geoff

 

[lymond]

(reread my post above...I added stuff)

Rome has Maoi too, so good chance he can build a Harbor fast there.

Actually, looking at map closely now. (I see Rome myself as i played a couple of turns). It seems ferry GMs from the West would be best. You can setup a chain of Galleons + your Caravels. OR send through Ethiopia and pick up on the other side and ferry over to Rome. Engineering would help but not sure how soon you'll be able to trade for it.

Rome really is about equidistant from both sides of your empire, but the East direction is a bit awkward. You could ferry/chain over to Salamanca or Madrid and walk to Rome as well.

I expect Rome with Harbor + ToA could net you close to 2000g per mission.

Kish would have decent yield too but no harbor ...at least yet. Gilgs does have Compass though, so maybe he will have one there soon though Kish has poor hammers it appears. Not a bad thought.

 

[crashmon]

Ok going for Thebes first and that will extend Golden Age... 8 Turns for Thebes to get the Great Engineer, as can only run 1 Eng in there.... Will slow the others when they one turn from starving, and one turn from GPP

Will go Thebes then NZ then Lymo, then Fippy for the GP. Then we stat to think on war

 

[coanda]

Antium is Rome's second city (Rome, Antium, Cumae in order), so it's probably pretty close to the capital. Which means it's pretty much as far as possible to get away from your empire, somewhat unlucky there.

You can get a Great Merchant to Antium from Fippy in eight turns I believe - load on a Galleon by Fippy, sail to unload south of Aksum, walk to Akwa, chain caravel - caravel - Galleon to Antium. Rome is probably nine or ten turns away then, depending on how far it is from Antium. Not sure whether the timing works out regarding your tech; it would be worth giving up 200 gold from an eventual trade mission to Rome if it meant you could get Cuirassier tech a turn or two faster by just completing a mission to Kish sooner (you can just chain three Galleons to be there the turn after you're in Fippy). Depends on whether you're running out of gold for your research or not; one GM mission is going to give enough money to fund all the relevant research.

Do I understand correctly that you're now planning to try for 24 turns of Golden Age, by getting Great Engineer in Thebes then sacrificing it and your Great Scientist for a second golden age? That's a workable plan. 12 turns of golden age by itself is worth around 1200 beakers and 600 hammers to you, plus the added GPP generation. Might be the most useful way to use a Great Scientist and Great Engineer at this point. Go ahead and run three merchant specs in Thebes though; you probably get a Great Engineer, but maybe you'd get lucky generate a Great Merchant (which you'd very much prefer) instead. And that way you can finish the GP there in 5 turns, so all you need to do is put Fippy on the horse tile for those five turns to make sure Thebes generates next. You'd have to take the pigs back from Krikav, which would mean putting it on some cottages so it doesn't starve.

 

[crashmon]

OK

Plan is following....
1) Use GE to buld Taj Mahal to generate a 2nd Golden Age
2) Still Have the GS
3) then in 2nd GA, should be able to use 1 GM to send to rome, and 2 GM to bulb a third golden age with the GS
4) Soon will have enough HA so I can run full wealth
5) Tech Lib, use it for MT, then tech to GunPowder
6) by then should have enough gold via 100% wealth + Great M to Rome to super upgrade to a whole bunch of cuirs
7) by by Zara

This is the save, done a lot of tile swapping to have Thebes get the GE next, while still putting a lot of points into GM's.

currently on 960 AD

EDIT, I'd already started the turn when I saw the advice about the GM in Thebes (which I did not do), but I will get the GE at the same time the golden Age ends, so while this was a mistake, I should still be able to go straight from 1 GA into another GA. I know I have lost GPP here, and will ensure that I remember this when I do this type of thing in my next game

 

[lymond]

Run a merchant in Thebes as well...if you get a GM instead well no big loss as that what you are mainly trying to get. Thebes gp should be quite a bit faster than 8 turns

@coanda crash will use the GE to build Taj in Sampsa in 1t

My City can always keep close to 1t from gp each time another city is ready to pop, as the city can be completely stalled on gpp if needed to make sure another city goes first. You will have no problem getting a GP from My City when it is ready to as it has so much gpp there. This is what I meant by my thesis paper yesterday ..ha

 

[coanda]

Oh nice Taj Mahal is on the table. That's definitely the correct play @lymond, I had completely overlooked it.

Soon will have enough HA so I can run full wealth

5 chariots and 7 horse archers isn't even getting close to the point where you say "time to stop building up." If you just keep building horse archers until you unlock Cuirassiers, you'll probably have about 15-20 horse archers by that time. Which means about 4000 gold to upgrade them all plus the chariots; that's one great merchant mission and ten or so turns running 0% slider, a very reasonable amount of gold you might well have within 20 turns of now.

Edit: a quick glance at your save, be certain you don't grow Fippy. You don't want to lose half of that juicy stored food. Time to start working some specialists there again.

 

[lymond]

ha...I know my explanation of this gpp stuff can be confusing, but keep maxxing as much as possible like in My City, NZ and Lymo....just don't pop in those cities before Thebes. Just keep it a hair close every turn. Next turn Thebes will be 1t from the GP, so all other cities can MAX out GPP to the MAX, man. Full throttle cause Thebes has priority on popping gp over all other cities.

No clue why Sampsa has not been running specialists..you coulda popped one there eventually. jnebbe too. you lost out on these cities by not emphasizing them more over the course of this golden age. Not a huge deal as you will get enough GMs here for you needs.


(not sure what your worker near Etruscan were doing, but that jungle gem could have been dejungled before the city came out of revolt - then moved right on pigs via the road. No a worker appears to moved into the jungle for some reason)

Thebes - might as well finish that HA you started since you might forget..then if you wish do some fail gold. Shweggie might be better than Taj for that.
You could run Taj in NZ a couple of turn for a little fail gold there.

cancel Giggles trade and grab Sugar instead.

Trade Construction to Zara this turn or next for gold+map...very high chance he techs it soon and maybe he goes Engineering at some point before you attack for a trade.

don't send spies into his land yet as they will just get caught...you'll want at least 3 or 4 probably in there cause they get caught or fail.

 

[crashmon]

yea the initial plan is 20 Curs, then to keep building them going forward, as will probably lose some at some point.

Spy is built and ready to hit Axum once I declare, but that will be 20 turns or so

 

[lymond]

reread post above as I keep adding stuff.....another note on spies is that you probably want them in aksum about 5 turns before you will attack askum....keeping in mind that you will hit Lali first, which unfortunately can't be attack immediately do to that dern forest and peak.

Some workers can create road now like between sampsa and ethiopia to speed troop movement.

I'd not bunch up my units on his borders for now. keep you stack say 1SE of Sampsa ( you want a road on that tile now)

Make adjustments to your cities as noted before. Lymo is fine though this turn since it is close to starving..next turn it can max.

Post a save next turn so we can check you cities before Thebes pops GE.

sampsa should be running specialists instead of those hills..always should have. maybe a engi and merchant.