Chillaxation
Warlord
Series Non-Philosophical/Financial, Episode 1.
Asoka/Monarch. "Dharmachakrapravartana-sutra"/"Setting the Wheel of Truth Rolling"
So I realized it might help me to play through an entire game with civfanatics.com's help/heckling. My previous game was a domination win as Elizabeth on Monarch, my first win on this difficulty.
Unfortunately, it also made me intimately aware of how much easier it is for financial and philosophical leaders to build their economies...and how far I had yet to go, since I was lagging behind many players' usual dates for techs etc.
Therefore I pared the leader list down to the 34 leaders who are neither financial nor philosophical. I made a vector out of the 34 names. I then randomly permuted the vector into one which tells me the next 34 leaders I will play - in case I have the sticktoitiveness to be like one of those 40-thread turnset posters
My hope is to become better at CIV, or at least to understand how much work it would take me to win consistently on Monarch before I give up and decide I have to use my free time otherwise 
-----
First I drew Ashoka, the Chakravartin - he whose chariot-wheels rolled over the world without obstruction.
Ashoka is Spiritual and Organized.
Spiritual - Not happy about this; I avoid Spiritual leaders when playing for fun. I highly dislike diverting production from military and infrastructure to build religious units and buildings; the Spiritual trait may force me to get over myself about this. Priesthood enables the half-cost building for this trait.
Organized - A fine trait. It's easy for me to remember that Organized builds Courthouses at half hammers; remembering this about Lighthouses is harder. I have to keep in mind that coastal cities will not be as slow starting up, and should be settled more boldly. Sailing and Code of Laws - and, much later, Assembly Line - enable this trait's half-cost buildings.
-----
India has the only worker UU, the Fast Worker. Well-respected Civ mavens think this is one of the best UUs. In a way, the Fast Worker will force me to think even more about efficient worker management as I will have no combat UU to give me an advantage during the course of the game. This UU is buildable at the beginning of the game, a distinction shared only by the Incan Empire's Quechua.
India's UB, the Mausoleum, comes later in the game with the discovery of Constitution. It is a Jail replacement that gives +2
. I hope to have such a tech lead by Constitution that WW-related 
will not be a problem. We'll see if that hope has any basis in reality
-----
Goals:
Tech rate/economy: In my last game I got CoL, CS and Lib significantly later than benchmarks mentioned by good players on CF forums - and this was with rapid bulbing from Philosophical and strong cottage output from Financial. Ideally I'd have an improved economy even without those crutch traits. This is the primary area where I'd like to improve my play.
Expansion pace: Pursuant to the above, I'd like to hit the sweet spot in REX where I don't completely kneecap myself either in land-grabbing or in tech pace. Keeping worker numbers near davemcw's 1.5 per city should give me a strong advantage in setting up pre-border-pop productive cities. I realized recently that a major strategic problem I've had is that I consistently place cities such that I have to wait for the borders to pop before I have workable tiles. While I can't throw tiles away for the sake of having immediate production/commerce, I'm looking to make new cities as productive as possible as quickly as possible, without waiting for culture pops.
Military buildup: I'm going to play with my military buildup levels a bit. For a long time while playing Prince level I built minimal military and was consistently invaded. davemcw's admonition to stay near the top in soldiers was fine for that level, but I find I fall behind in tech at the expansion pace necessary to keep up in land on Monarch. Other fine Immortal/Deity level players do not recommend such a strong military, giving such benchmarks as staying above 50% power of your strongest neighbor. I think I'll walk a middle way; I'll take slipping to 7/9 in soldiers as a signal to build army, and rising to 3/9 as a signal to stop building the military and refocus. Of course it's critical with this to just play the map, rush when it's advantageous, prepare for war when a war would be winnable, and play the diplomacy game when it's not. I got a lot of mileage out of catapults on Prince, and I'm open to a cat/sword or cat/elephant war if the opportunity presents itself.
-----
TL/DR. Settings are Monarch, Large, Continents, Normal speed, choose religions, no huts, no events, cultureflipping after capture.
Here's our puppet ruler:
Here are our settings:
And here's the start:
Save is attached below.
The gray forest on the N frontier suggests that we are on the northern reaches of this planet. I think moving the warrior 1W might show something worthwhile, but each of the 7 directions our settler can move would cost an entire turn. I'm inclined towards SIP.
Asoka/Monarch. "Dharmachakrapravartana-sutra"/"Setting the Wheel of Truth Rolling"
So I realized it might help me to play through an entire game with civfanatics.com's help/heckling. My previous game was a domination win as Elizabeth on Monarch, my first win on this difficulty.
Unfortunately, it also made me intimately aware of how much easier it is for financial and philosophical leaders to build their economies...and how far I had yet to go, since I was lagging behind many players' usual dates for techs etc.
Therefore I pared the leader list down to the 34 leaders who are neither financial nor philosophical. I made a vector out of the 34 names. I then randomly permuted the vector into one which tells me the next 34 leaders I will play - in case I have the sticktoitiveness to be like one of those 40-thread turnset posters
My hope is to become better at CIV, or at least to understand how much work it would take me to win consistently on Monarch before I give up and decide I have to use my free time otherwise -----
First I drew Ashoka, the Chakravartin - he whose chariot-wheels rolled over the world without obstruction.
Ashoka is Spiritual and Organized.
Spiritual - Not happy about this; I avoid Spiritual leaders when playing for fun. I highly dislike diverting production from military and infrastructure to build religious units and buildings; the Spiritual trait may force me to get over myself about this. Priesthood enables the half-cost building for this trait.
Organized - A fine trait. It's easy for me to remember that Organized builds Courthouses at half hammers; remembering this about Lighthouses is harder. I have to keep in mind that coastal cities will not be as slow starting up, and should be settled more boldly. Sailing and Code of Laws - and, much later, Assembly Line - enable this trait's half-cost buildings.
-----
India has the only worker UU, the Fast Worker. Well-respected Civ mavens think this is one of the best UUs. In a way, the Fast Worker will force me to think even more about efficient worker management as I will have no combat UU to give me an advantage during the course of the game. This UU is buildable at the beginning of the game, a distinction shared only by the Incan Empire's Quechua.
India's UB, the Mausoleum, comes later in the game with the discovery of Constitution. It is a Jail replacement that gives +2
. I hope to have such a tech lead by Constitution that WW-related will not be a problem. We'll see if that hope has any basis in reality -----
Goals:
Tech rate/economy: In my last game I got CoL, CS and Lib significantly later than benchmarks mentioned by good players on CF forums - and this was with rapid bulbing from Philosophical and strong cottage output from Financial. Ideally I'd have an improved economy even without those crutch traits. This is the primary area where I'd like to improve my play.
Expansion pace: Pursuant to the above, I'd like to hit the sweet spot in REX where I don't completely kneecap myself either in land-grabbing or in tech pace. Keeping worker numbers near davemcw's 1.5 per city should give me a strong advantage in setting up pre-border-pop productive cities. I realized recently that a major strategic problem I've had is that I consistently place cities such that I have to wait for the borders to pop before I have workable tiles. While I can't throw tiles away for the sake of having immediate production/commerce, I'm looking to make new cities as productive as possible as quickly as possible, without waiting for culture pops.
Military buildup: I'm going to play with my military buildup levels a bit. For a long time while playing Prince level I built minimal military and was consistently invaded. davemcw's admonition to stay near the top in soldiers was fine for that level, but I find I fall behind in tech at the expansion pace necessary to keep up in land on Monarch. Other fine Immortal/Deity level players do not recommend such a strong military, giving such benchmarks as staying above 50% power of your strongest neighbor. I think I'll walk a middle way; I'll take slipping to 7/9 in soldiers as a signal to build army, and rising to 3/9 as a signal to stop building the military and refocus. Of course it's critical with this to just play the map, rush when it's advantageous, prepare for war when a war would be winnable, and play the diplomacy game when it's not. I got a lot of mileage out of catapults on Prince, and I'm open to a cat/sword or cat/elephant war if the opportunity presents itself.
-----
TL/DR. Settings are Monarch, Large, Continents, Normal speed, choose religions, no huts, no events, cultureflipping after capture.
Here's our puppet ruler:
Here are our settings:
And here's the start:
Save is attached below.
The gray forest on the N frontier suggests that we are on the northern reaches of this planet. I think moving the warrior 1W might show something worthwhile, but each of the 7 directions our settler can move would cost an entire turn. I'm inclined towards SIP.
Spoiler :
You've just beaten the good old Plains cow glitch with your start.
