[BTS] Noble player looking for his 1st Monarch Win

[migalhone]

Hey all,

I've won NC 242 Charlemagne on Noble, REX'ing peacefully to 9 cities, then vassalizing everyone with Cuirassiers. On that thread @FlyinJohnnyL advised me to jump straight into Monarch since there was no point playing Prince. So here i am

Map, as usual: no huts no events, Pangea Map, random leader. Attached my save, as well as the World Builder save and my initial save, for those who want to play this map.

Yeah i know shadow games usually are best done starting from turn 0, getting advice on every 5-10 turns of play. Because i was merely taking this as a learning game, didn't bother to start from 0 and creating a thread, but my success on this current game made me think other wise.

Incoming wall of text!

Spoiler Stopped playing at T85 :

Leader is Isabella: Expansive is one of my favorite traits. Spiritual i feel it's not bad but i'm not skilled enough to use it properly. The UB seems interesting, the UU is nice since it's a Cuirassier with bonus vs melee.

Spawned right next to Boudicca and she founded Buddhism. Since Boudicca is so close and we share similar border colours, i felt i had to rush her to go anywhere with this game.

Teched Agriculture, AH (have horses right there so HA rush it is), Wheel, Pottery, HBR and Writing. Read somewhere here (or maybe took that from AZ/Lain) that 3 cities are all it takes for an HA rush, so i've followed that tip. Honestly both Barcelona and Seville are questionable spots to settle but then again i didn't had much choice. Cities were grown to happiness cap, working cottages since HBR requires lots of commerce, building lots of workers before HBR was available, so i could pre-chop all of the forests around. When HBR was online, chopping commenced: DOW'd Boudicca with around 12 HAs, perhaps it was overkill (lost only 1-2) but oh well, a sucessfull rush is a successfull rush

I've never pulled off a successfull early rush before, this felt nice! HA's against only archers went smoothly and took her out, kinda surprised she didn't had Spearmen. Razed her 2nd and 3rd cities (AI settling choices were awkward), kept the one where Buddhism was found: lots of forests to chop, pigs on the 1st ring, happiness resources right there (unlike mine...)

I'm curious on the possibilities i have in front of me now:

- Not sure if it's worth it to go after Shaka right now, who seems to be the closest neighbour and is also Buddhist. He dislikes that i've DOW'd a friend, same as the Ottomans (even though he's Hindu?). Hopefully that won't be a nuisance as the game goes on.

- Do i keep pumping out HAs and go for Shaka? He's the closest neighbour but at the same time I'm afraid of getting bogged down due to the distance between him and my troops. Also fear getting behind the other AIs, since by now, on my learning/pratice games i usually have 2 out of Alphabet/Mathematics/Currency, by turn 100.

- Should i just focus on settling, improving and working all the available land? Seems i have plenty of it to settle, should have used a dotmap to show my intended settling spots. If i go this route, should i disband my HAs, to save on maintenance? They seem useful as fog busters and to deal with barb issues.

- Since Spain's UU is a Cuirassier one, is it a good idea to keep my HA's if later going for a Cuirassier rush?

- Being a Spiritual leadear and have the Buddhist holy city, how do i best use this to my advantage?

Thanks for reading and for your feedback

 

[Donald Duck1]

More experienced players will be able to answer your questions much better than I can, but for me the main obstacle moving from prince to monarch was neglecting diplomatic relations with AIs. Often got attacked with my pants down, disrupting all my plans. So keep a close eye on relations, and who are each others worst enemies, and improve them when necessary with gifting resources/techs, giving in to demands, trading resources of which you only have 1 for an equivalent one, being very careful with religion.

 

[scheines]

Will add / edit in more thoughts when I can load the save, but here’s a few thoughts:

• Screenshots of the start, occasional progress, etc. are helpful so people don’t have to load your save.
• I can’t tell when you teched BW. Bronze working will drastically accelerate your rush speed, because of slavery and forest chopping. I’d recommend utilizing them heavily for an early rush like this. Even doing mining + BW before AH is often advisable, unless you have a few pasturable tiles in your immediate vicinity.
• I’ll have to see the cities to be sure, but usually razing many cities defeats the point of declaring war. Sure, raze if it’s really terrible, but often the sheer time saved is better than a perfect settling plan. After all, you spent so many hammers on an army, might as well get some free cities (and buildings) from it!

 

[migalhone]

• I can’t tell when you teched BW. Bronze working will drastically accelerate your rush speed, because of slavery and forest chopping. I’d recommend utilizing them heavily for an early rush like this. Even doing mining + BW before AH is often advisable, unless you have a few pasturable tiles in your immediate vicinity.
• I’ll have to see the cities to be sure, but usually razing many cities defeats the point of declaring war. Sure, raze if it’s really terrible, but often the sheer time saved is better than a perfect settling plan. After all, you spent so many hammers on an army, might as well get some free cities (and buildings) from it!

You're right, should have used screenshots, good call.

I teched mining and BW before HBR, forgot to write those.

As for the cities, one didnt had a food resource and the other had a food resource but not on the 1st tile. Since i'm used to settle cities with a food resource on the 1st tile, i didnt liked the cities positioning.

 

[Pangaea]

Hmm, a BAT game so I wasn't able to load your save. Would be very useful with screenshots so we can look at the situation when not able to load the save. Both the start and current overview, and probably something in between since you have played 85 turns already.

By all means raze cities if they are horrendously bad, and/or your economy is in a rut. But generally don't. I wouldn't raze a city with food in the second ring that you captured. You've already spent hammers and resources on an army, some of which (probably) died taking the city. This far into the game missionary spam may be a thing, maybe the city even had a religion already. Or if it's size 3-4 you could pretty easily chop/whip a library there, or a monument for that matter.

HA-rushing is fun indeed

 

[scheines]

Agreed with Pangaea on razing - no use in making it perfect, as long as the city has food, a strategic resource, or even a handful of green tiles to workshop later, I would keep it. Otherwise it’ll just take that much longer to get settlers out to where you want, etc.