[BTS] Pacal Monarch- Getting over the hump

[M60A3TTS]

Nappy's unit came from the northeast.

 

[sampsa]

Even with FIN flood plains cottages, the +1 - from gold means every city can work an extra cottage, or suffer 1 extra whip, which is still nice. Plus, I don't think the player can get early Monarchy in trade with Nappy or Churchill, so the gold is still worth it.
Agree about "not that urgent", cottaging the fp is better for now. I think the best timing to improve and connect the gold is when most the cities grow to size 5 or 4.

Yes, +1 is super welcome, not saying that. It's just that getting the border pop is such a long project that I'd try to find another ways to gain happiness, like even self-teching monarchy.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Now I'm thinking maybe it would be good enough just to axe rush Churchill to take London. Obtaining the elephants and what is probably a good city location would not be a bad thing. It might still leave a buffer with France after that.

 

[krikav]

Haven't studied the situation in detail, but starting an axe-rush projekt against a protective neighbour around T50 doesn't sound like the path of least resistance.

 

[coanda]

I'm not saying it's the wrong decision here - on Monarch with your current locations you can probably make it work. But ideally you don't want to be suddenly deciding to axe-rush someone on turn 48. It's something you ought to be planning from like turn 25 or earlier; that thinking should impact where you settle your second city, and you should be committing hard to it. By the time you get along to turn 50+ without having begun prep, your three most common options are horse archers, catapults, or peaceful all the way to the Renaissance.

 

[Gumbolt]

Pending on defences you would of likely needed 10-12 axes. Not sure how many defenders AI really leave to defend on Monarch. HA rush is normally my go to. Settling so close to the AI sooner or later you will want to rush them.

 

[coanda]

Pending on defences you would of likely needed 10-12 axes. Not sure how many defenders AI really leave to defend on Monarch. HA rush is normally my go to. Settling so close to the AI sooner or later you will want to rush them.

Yeah, if there are horses available somewhere within reach a 4-city horse archer rush would absolutely be the way to go here. With so many cottage-able floodplains and a gold resource, plus a FIN leader, this is probably a game you'd just take out two, three, four AIs in a row with HAs.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Turn 51 and copper is connected. I have two workers working on the cow now. Once the pasture is done next turn, if London is the object of desire, I need to get the workers chopping away next. We can see horse to the south now, although I'm starting a run on IW.

 

[coanda]

Iron Working is very rarely a tech you want to self-research early in the game.

Jungle takes too many worker-turns to improve early in the game, swords are either inferior horse archers or very delayed axes, and as trade-bait it's pretty worthless because the AIs love to research Iron Working - you can't trade it to them often, and can usually get it from them fairly easily after Alphabet. I don't think this game is an exception. Iron Working is not the play here. Not 100% sure what techs you currently have, but I think Writing or Horseback Riding would be the next priority depending on how you want to play it out.

 

[Harv]

Iron Working is very rarely a tech you want to self-research early in the game.

Jungle takes too many worker-turns to improve early in the game

I was finding all this out the hard way in a version of my Mansa Earth18 game. It was early in the AD's and we were clearing out a bunch of jungle wondering why we were so far behind.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Iron Working is very rarely a tech you want to self-research early in the game.

Jungle takes too many worker-turns to improve early in the game, swords are either inferior horse archers or very delayed axes, and as trade-bait it's pretty worthless because the AIs love to research Iron Working - you can't trade it to them often, and can usually get it from them fairly easily after Alphabet. I don't think this game is an exception. Iron Working is not the play here. Not 100% sure what techs you currently have, but I think Writing or Horseback Riding would be the next priority depending on how you want to play it out.

Thanks for the input. Nothing is invested in any tech yet, this is the first turn for research so I can go writing, if peaceful expansion is going to be the strategy.

I was thinking if it is going to be an axe rush against London, I might be able to squeeze in a couple swords at the end of building 10 or so axes if the tech completed soon enough, and iron was nearby. Admittedly that's two if's.

On the other hand going for HBR now as part of a rush seems would take far too much time against what admittedly would already be a late rush as I'd need yet another city, and roading to the horses nearby and put in a pasture. So I was seeing IW as a more immediately useful tech than HBR. If we are just focused on trade value, then I definitely agree writing, alpha and aesthetics are the logical path.

 

[sampsa]

I was thinking if it is going to be an axe rush against London, I might be able to squeeze in a couple swords at the end of building 10 or so axes if the tech completed soon enough, and iron was nearby. Admittedly that's two if's.

If you go axes, you go axes, two swords in the end make zero difference. Don't tech stuff that is somewhat useful, tech stuff that is MOST useful.

On the other hand going for HBR now as part of a rush seems would take far too much time against what admittedly would already be a late rush as I'd need yet another city, and roading to the horses nearby and put in a pasture. So I was seeing IW as a more immediately useful tech than HBR. If we are just focused on trade value, then I definitely agree writing, alpha and aesthetics are the logical path.

I think HBR is a completely valid choice if you want war. HAs are 2-movers so the wars are a lot easier. 3S of cap is a fine spot to share cottages anyway. Note that you've had pottery a long time, but have no cottages (does cap have a granary btw?). How many T away is the gold border pop?

I think it's between writing (peaceful), writing (axes) and HBR. If you go peaceful, you can get extra via trade from Churchill. If war, you can just take it. Going axes feels a bit risky as your play so far hasn't directed you a lot into that direction, but I don't know what to expect really from monarch AI. I know I wouldn't invest in barracks in this case, just get granaries, 2-pop whip once each city and chop some.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think axe rush is dead in water. Protective AI and you have no way to tell what defenders without Open borders. This is a large map so should be a lot of good land. Maybe even worth going pults/axes. Unless you can trade for ivory.

HBR rush should be via around 1000bc. Many go writing first for HBR rushes. You have a lot of land to west so no panic yet. Churchill is a nice buffer zone to Napolean.

I wouldn't be building lots of farms round the new city. Get up some cottages instead and get the economy running..

Once you have OB make sure your road connects to English for 2-3C trade routes.

Warriors should not be in cities unless at happiness cap. Need to fogbust a bit even for Monarch level.

A save would really help for advice.

 

[konata_LS]

Very good points about Open borders and trade routes above. Plus, open border with Churchill will let you know if Churchill has metals or if his cities are on hill.

If OP wants to go for wars, Horse archers would be better than Axes, especially for Pacal. Non AGG Axe rush against a PRO neighbour might be a little risky, but HAs rush work well from Monarch to Immortal, sometimes on Deity. So, learning about how to execute an efficient HA rush is something which helps OP moving up levels.

After connecting the horse, maybe send one chariot to find the rest of AIs, and have ideas about the overall diplomacy situation? For example, to finds out which AIs are Hindu and Buddhist, who hates who, and what is the dominant religion...?
Monarch AIs don't start with free scouts, so it's not surprising that only 2 AIs met until T50 . Sometimes in my Pangaea games at Monarch I meet all the AIs after T100 .

 

[sampsa]

Many go writing first for HBR rushes.

Pretty sure I would not do that here. Library doesn't seem very useful, while just working cottages asap does.

 

[lymond]

Yep, self-teching IW is def not a recipe for moving up levels.

Any plans on a new city? I can't tell where to settle from the pics. I do see horses to the south, but no food anywhere. Post a save too with reports.

I see little to no spawnbusting here.

 

[sampsa]

A save would really help for advice.

This. Of course you can just play on if you feel like just getting on with the game. But now would be a good time to stop and really think about things. What are you trying to do and how?

 

[M60A3TTS]

I have reached turn 56 and am posting this save and I'll try to answer some of the questions and concerns. Some of this may be seen as pushback, but it would help clarify how I have been seeing things.

Going axes while my play hasn't been in that direction. I don't see that as true. Just the opposite. My workers had to road to the nearest copper and get a mine down. They meaning two of them out of three total did this at the expense of building cottages. The motivation was as much as wanting to have something better available to counter barb archers should they appear from the fog. I could pop rush warriors to counter that threat earlier, but didn't see how that was the better option than getting axes on line. With the cows on line the workers can now focus on cottage placement.

I do understand the benefit of fogbusting but I have been whipping and have needed someone at home because i also have to counter the "we demand military protection" penalty that is stacking on top. Of course I could just ignore that and live with some angry citizenry, but wasn't thinking that was optimal play. Prior to adding the latest pair of axes, my military was 5 warriors in total. There is a lot of ground that fogbusters would have to cover and only more warriors would help with that. Now that I have axes available, I am definitely ready to aggressively scout and fogbust since I have the means to do it.

Getting granaries everywhere. I'm still cooling down from previous whips. In some cases I could whip a granary but it would be a 1-pop which seem to be sub-optimal as I understood it.

The mine at Lakamha and when it will be in our cultural borders. I was working on the monument to do that, them got a post that the granary might be better there. So I switched the build and have zero culture because the granary is still queued up ahead of the monument. I could whip the granary but I'm still 7 turns from completing the cool down of the previous axe.

Churchill diplomacy. Yes, I suppose we can start trading with him, but as mentioned he's worst enemy of Nappy and we know he's going to demand I cancel any trades. So is the diplo hit worth it when I refuse? Maybe, not sure.

Next steps is to get two more cities down, one NW by the copper cow and one probably 1W of the horse.

 

[sampsa]

Going axes while my play hasn't been in that direction. I don't see that as true. Just the opposite. My workers had to road to the nearest copper and get a mine down. They meaning two of them out of three total did this at the expense of building cottages. The motivation was as much as wanting to have something better available to counter barb archers should they appear from the fog. I could pop rush warriors to counter that threat earlier, but didn't see how that was the better option than getting axes on line. With the cows on line the workers can now focus on cottage placement.

I understood axes were built mostly for barb defence. What I mean by "your play so far hasn't directed you a lot into that direction" means that you haven't done everything you can to attack with axes asap. First you come up with a plan and then you seek to find the fastest way to acquire it. Here you are still undecided and it's already past T50.

There is a lot of ground that fogbusters would have to cover and only more warriors would help with that. Now that I have axes available, I am definitely ready to aggressively scout and fogbust since I have the means to do it.

If you are scouting with axes, you are not attacking Churchill with them. I think it's time to forget the axe attack.

Getting granaries everywhere. I'm still cooling down from previous whips. In some cases I could whip a granary but it would be a 1-pop which seem to be sub-optimal as I understood it.

The mine at Lakamha and when it will be in our cultural borders. I was working on the monument to do that, them got a post that the granary might be better there. So I switched the build and have zero culture because the granary is still queued up ahead of the monument. I could whip the granary but I'm still 7 turns from completing the cool down of the previous axe.

Granaries should be built as fast as you can, meaning also sometimes 1-pop whipping, because granaries effectively double food! In Lakamha you should've either 1-pop whipped the monument or granary immediately when available. Now you still have neither in a city that has been up a long time.

I don't know how you got the axe out from there. If 1-pop whip, that's a big mistake. 2-pop whip, overflow to finish granary was a thousand times better. Same -penalty, more immediate . I don't really think this was a city to build an axe anyway, as it requires both a granary and a monument.

Churchill diplomacy. Yes, I suppose we can start trading with him, but as mentioned he's worst enemy of Nappy and we know he's going to demand I cancel any trades. So is the diplo hit worth it when I refuse? Maybe, not sure.

Yes, road to him immediately at writing and open borders. I'd even give copper for ivory if possible, you are starving for .

Next steps is to get two more cities down, one NW by the copper cow and one probably 1W of the horse.

Spoiler :

My next two spots would probably be these. Both have decent and high . You need to take advantage of those nice FIN river-tiles!

 

[M60A3TTS]

I understood axes were built mostly for barb defence. What I mean by "your play so far hasn't directed you a lot into that direction" means that you haven't done everything you can to attack with axes asap. First you come up with a plan and then you seek to find the fastest way to acquire it. Here you are still undecided and it's already past T50.

Yes, you're right as I didn't jump straight at the axe rush option so we are making friendly with Winnie. I have roaded to him and traded for ivory as you suggested.