New SG - Monarch, Standard Settings, Continents, Large Map

[Ralph_Jackson]

So for those who are looking to get over the Monarch "bump" (which I definitely experienced!) how about saying what you have struggled with as maybe we can steer the game towards looking at those.

My failings were
1. Couldn't resist spending hammers on every shiny new building that was unlocked.
Cure. Being strict on city specialisation...e.g designating cities as Production, Research, GP Farm and making ourselves stick to it.
2. Not being agreesive enough in an early land grab war
Cure. Well with Augustus the cure is pretty obvious
3. Losing ground in the middle ages
Cure. Disciplined lightbulbing and beelining key techs and then using tech trading to fill in.
4. Trying to be everybody's friend... ending up with middling relations with lots of AI's and no tech trading buddies..
Cure. Going for a diplomatic or PA based win where you have to choose your friends and enemies in a disciplined manner and stick to it.

Views...

I will post in some suggested SG Etiquette rules which lots of people use and make SG games even more fun!!

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Well here are the Deviant Minds SG etiquette rules which have never failed me for our Mighty Leaders consideration..

Alpha: The quality of your report outweighs the quality of your play. We’re here to have fun, and, of course, winning is fun, but losing in style is preferable to a boring win.

Bravo: Reports should be detailed, with plenty of screen shots and player commentary, explanations, musings, etc; an auto-log dump will not suffice. Shots of the F9 screens and overview shots of the empire are nice too, once in a while.

Charlie: Punctuality rocks! “24/48” means post a "got it" within 24 hours of when the last save was posted, and play within 48 hours of that ‘got it.’ Waiting 47 hours to ask for a skip is lame. Punk out two times in a row, and you’ll be dropped from the roster. Skips and swaps are fine, but try to let us know sooner, rather than later.

Delta: Major game decisions (war/peace declarations, religion swaps, city placement, etc) should be arrived at via group consensus.
1. If the team disagrees with you, either argue your case better, or do it their way. Do NOT just blow them off and do it your way because it's your turn.
2. However, if there’s no consensus and you’re up, do it your way and explain why. Conversely, if someone else is up, don't whine when they do it their way.
3. Similarly, overruling techs or city builds is rude and should be done via consensus, barring an emergency.
4. In extraordinary situations, sometimes an opportunity presents itself that the group didn't foresee. If the consequences of it are great, players should stop, and refer the question to the group.

Echo: Being a better player does not give you the right to belittle anyone else or their play. Other people are going to disagree with you on major decisions; get used to the idea, and play nice. If not, take your ball and go home.

Foxtrot: Thread spam is good. Trash talking, poking fun, gentle ribbing, virtual noogies, and generally horsing around are all encouraged, but don’t be rude.

Golf: Automate sparingly.
1. Workers should almost never be automated, except perhaps late-game or building a trade network. However, if you have to, set your game options to “disallow automated worker forest chopping” and “keep previous improvements.”
2. Use of the “Emphasis” buttons is fine, but let the group know and explain your reasoning (specialization is a major game decision). If you prevent growth in a city, let the group know and remind them to take it off. Do NOT let the governor select build orders.
3. Sending units on go-to routes that last beyond your set is acceptable only if they’re heading for a rally point or if you otherwise inform your teammates.

Hotel: NEVER fortify Great People. Is it so hard to push the spacebar 15 times??

India: Sign spamming is rude. Signs can be helpful reminders, but too many signs makes them easily ignored. Once a sign is no longer valid, delete it. [The only exception to this are city specialization signs

 

[dazedroyalty]

Tech trading and city specialization are my two weakest areas I think. It will be great to learn. I am getting better but could definitely use more practice. My only win on Monarch so far was a Quechua rush...

 

[butlerj1982]

I almost never would trade techs unless offered by the AI. I need to get better at that.

For me, its middle age slip. I would usually come out of the early years OK, with some god expansion or a successful early war - but I just couldn't keep up, and would fall behind and behind until the spaceship took me down.

I'll play my 20 at lunch today. Should post a save by 3 or so.

 

[gigi_muschi]

I don't manage city specialization very well. For example, even if it's a production city i am tempted to drop a couple of cottages on some floodplains.

Also, i sometimes lag behind in techs during the Middle Ages because i can't seem to decide which path is better for a certain situation.

I hope i will learn a lot from this Succession Game.

 

[scrubkai]

I know I tend to be way too Xenophobic, so I need work on the tech trading and diplomacy thing...

Hey I just noticed something... We are Augustus Ceasar, so that mean no 50% cost settlers right? Or has that changed in BTS? (I haven't played the Romans in quite some time)

 

[butlerj1982]

according to civilopedia, we do get settlers for 50% of the cost.

We are also industrious, so we may want to think about building a wonder once we explore our terrain a bit - all those forests around Rome will be great for chopping otu something early if it comes down to that.

Maybe an Oracle CoL slingshot for courthouses to support an early praetorian stomping?

I'll have the turns and the save soon.

 

[dazedroyalty]

Our wonder choices will depend on local resources. If we have stone nearby I am a fan of Stonehenge to get the free border pops for our new cities. Marble nearby would make the Oracle a no-brainer.

 

[scrubkai]

according to civilopedia, we do get settlers for 50% of the cost.

Ahhh.... BTS changed his traits to Imperialistic, Industrious from Creative, Organized.
So that makes sense.

 

[butlerj1982]

Started out by moving the warrior 1NW to see if there was any advantage to moving the settler, but just exposed some tundra and more forested hills. Settled in place -



Started bronze working and a workboat in Rome, and started to move the warrior. Popped the hut and got a map of the north (woohoo). Could be a nice city with a few hills and three food resources directly north on the desert by the coast. Also explored a bit south and found stone! So, maybe Stonehenge after all?

Spent until turn 8 moving and scouting until:



Hannibal! Romans vs. Carthage. Almost seems right. Hannibal came from due west of our position. Keep scouting with the warrior, building WB and researching BW until I pop a goody hut and:




D'oh! Unlucky. Our warrior gets destroyed by the barbs, but on the scene comes a new friend:



Its Greece, in addition to Carthage.

I didn't stop the work boat and switch to warrior in the face of barbs for two reasons. First, I met Pericles because he had a troop next to the wounded barbs, so I figured he would take care of it most likely. Second, it was at the edge of the known world, so I figured we could take the chance that the barb wouldn't wander down to Rome. Still, very bad luck.

Summary: Uneventful. 5 turns until BW. WB 1 turn away. An overhead shot of the empire:



Build Worker after this WB? Or take time out to build a warrior? I'm thinking worker, settler chop while building warrior, claim metal if we can.

Where to go next for research? BW due in 5.

 

[butlerj1982]

Save is attached. gigi is up.

 

[dazedroyalty]

Bad luck on the barb hut. Good turnset otherwise. There's definitely a theme going on with our neighbors. Too bad for them that Greece and Carthage weren't able to stand up to Rome... They say history repeats itself.

Once we can get that stone hooked up, Stonehenge would be a real boon.

 

[gigi_muschi]

OK, i got the save, will play tomorrow. I think i will go with a worker next. Do we want an early war? I think so, going to research Iron Working next. Any advices and opinions are welcomed.

 

[butlerj1982]

Since we are neither financial nor organized, we will probably need CoL sooner rather than later with an early war. So, I think IW while we set up 2 or so more cities, then start the path to CoL / currency after a few worker techs like wheel ?

Given that we have stone, do we want to try for the pyramids ? Is that generally the thing to do once you realize you have stone?

 

[dazedroyalty]

We should definitely take advantage of the stone, which means Masonry will need to be researched. I would take masonry before IW so we can hook that stone up sooner rather than later.

The Pyramids usually don't fall too early in the game, since we are industrious and have stone, I think we can wait a little to make a decision. What won't wait is Stonehenge. If we want to go for that, we'll need to be intentional.

Hannibal won't be building lots of wonders, but Pericles loves 'em.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

So a few observations..

Popping the hut undoubtedly right and bad luck versus the barbs...

Stone. The stone for us is a complete red herring. Our next border pop is a long way away (55turns) so forget leveraging it for any early wonders (Henge / Pyramids). If we wanted it quciker we would be settling a very marginal city (deer / stone) when there are far better sites available.

Research post BW. I would look at Agri, AH to Writing as each one is a useful tech by itself with crops to be farmed and Cows/ pigs (later) to be hooked up which will be useful for our next few cities. Before researching the relatively expensive tech of Iron Working I would have a library plus two scientists up in our capital as we will get to IW a lot faster.

I would slip in the wheel only if we have copper on hand so we can hook it up to produce Axemen.

Micro Management. It looks to me as if we we could have switched a citizen to the three hammer hill a couple of turns ago once we hit size 2 . This would have got our worker started a turn earlier and so accelerated our progress slightly. A detailed nit picking MM point but as you go up the difficulty levels it is good for these to become second nature.

SO decisions for the team to discuss

Research path post BW.

Build post WB, Worker Warrior or vice versa?

 

[scrubkai]

Goody huts have not been good to us this game

As for an early war, we are going to need to be careful; both our neighbors are going to have early UU, so to some extent the effect our Praetorians have is going to be blunted.

But given the fact that we have limited directions to expand, and that we probably have Hannibal close to us in the west who may blindly steal our metal, I’d say we research iron next.
*But that really rubs me the wrong way as I normally try to put that off until I have a much better research engine.*

Build wise I would agree with butlerj1982, we go WB>Worker>Warrior while chopping a settler.

Am I correct that we want to change to Slavery so we can whip our Citizens *coughslavescough* for some useful hammers?

 

[dazedroyalty]

Ralph, good point about the Stone. I'm still too attracted to stone or marble.....

I don't think going to IW straight after BW is the best move. Let's get some other basics first (agriculture, AH at least). Let's hope there's some Bronze nearby for our next city...

I haven't gotten to open the save yet. How long until Rome's next growth? If it is soon, I'd favor the warrior first. Otherwise, let's go straight to the worker.

 

[scrubkai]

In thinking about this, I'm reconsidering my last post.

We need infrastructure before Iron.
So we should either go Agri, AH, Write
Or
Hunt, AH, Write if we have bronze so we have spearmen in case some Numidian Cavalry start showing up sometime soon.

 

[butlerj1982]

Once BW comes in, maybe we should have a screen shot posted to see where copper is and go from there. If there is copper to the north, by the corn and oysters (that clump of four desert hills with no forests looks like a maybe...), we will probably want to go Agri -> AH so we can work the corn. Conversely, if it is in the southwest by the game or west by the pigs, we'll probably want to go hunting -> ah.

Just thinking out loud...

John