Qin Continents Monarch Game

[Harv]

Ni Hao Civ Fanatics!

(I know nothing about Linguistics but I hope that is right.)

The last game I played was with Gilgamesh on Standard Continents Settings at Noble Difficulty and Huts and Events on. It turned out to be a Stomp Fest. This time I will increase the Difficulty to Monarch, which is the level I was learning to play before I took a very long break from the game.

The map is still Continents, but I turned Huts and Events OFF. The reasoning I can think of is understandable - Bad Huts and Events ruin the game and so do good ones!

Here are the settings:

Spoiler :

The Leader I chose is Qin Shi Huang of China.

Spoiler :

He in Industrious and Protective.

Protective unpopular to say the least and harder to leverage because there are no economic benefits and the military benefits do not appear until at least the mid game. So the potential of the Protective Trait is entirely dependent on what trait it is coupled with and the Unique Unit.

Industrious means cheap Forges. (and Wonders)

The Unique Unit is the Cho-Ko-Nu - a Crossbow Replacement with 2 First Strikes instead of 1 *and* causes Collateral Damage. With a Protective Leader and Barracks and either Vassalage or Theocracy I can have these guys up to Drill 3. I see a *lot* of potential here.

Did I meantion Cheap Forges? Metal Casting is on the way to Machinery.

The Unique Building is the Pavilion - It looks like a Theatre with a 25% Culture Boost. Is this a Culture War / Culture Victory application?

Starting Techs: Mining and Agriculture so two bases covered and a straight shot to either Animal Husbandry or Bronze Working. I like it!

Here is the start I rolled:

Spoiler :

It does not look like HoF cheese but it sure has a lot of Forest. Fresh Water comes from an Oasis and that may be a lake to the SW if not a Coast.

I am thinking Settle in Place and Build a Worker and Research Animal Husbandry and the Bronze Working then The Wheel then Pottery. Hunting and Archery if I do not find Bronze or Horse anywhere nearby.

The Warrior will just -uh- look around.

 

[vranasm]

why would you tech pottery with such start?

ah opens writing.
I am not fun of this start, but that surely is not surprising.

with this start I would look around for greener pastures with HA's if you fall over horses. That plains tile above oasis is somewhat suspicious.

 

[Ecori]

Imo SiP -> AH -> BW

As Vranasm said the plains NW propably hides a resource.

You are Ind and have alot of forests. Oracle could be nice.

 

[Harv]

@Vranasm - I thought about your question for a good time. From what we can already see on the start I can balance my food at my Happy Cap of Size 5 and a Granary in my Capital will make very little difference in my Hammer Output. I guess I was thinking for the number of turns lost getting to Writing (or more importantly Currency) Pottery is very cheap and useful and it is very likely a Granary will be the first build in the second city founded. So you would skip Pottery and get to Currency a few turns sooner?

Anyway I only played 25 Turns so far and decided this is a very good checkpoint to post.

Turn 0 - I moved the Warrior 1SW to reveal what I thought had Lake written all over it. Then I Settled in Place.

Spoiler :

It looks like 15 Tiles of Forest! 5 Grassland, 5 Plains, 3 Grass Hills, and 2 Plains Hills. One of the Grassland Forests is farmable.

Outside of the BFC there is a Wet Rice to the Southwest and there are Rivers to the Northeast and Southeast. To the Southeast I also see what appears to be Flood Plains.

Turn 2 - It is looking very intersting already! I have a Neighbor!

Spoiler :

Turn 11 - Animal Husbandry - No Horse - Start Research on Bronze Working
Somebody founded Hinduism.

Turn 14 - I have another close neighbor!

Spoiler :

Turn 15 - Worker Complete - He starts on the Cow Pasture.
Somebody founded Buddhism.

Turn 17 - I encoundered Brennus of the Celts.

Spoiler :

Turn 22 - Warrior in Beijing - Start another Warrior.

Turn 24 - I finally found a Horse to the Northwest - It is pretty far in the Jungle and there does not appear to be much food in the area.

Turn 25 - Bronze Working........ and I have Copper! I started research on the Wheel.
Slavery can wait for a while - I really have no need for it now.

So here is my situation at 3000BC.

Spoiler :

I have encountered three opponents and two of them seem to be very close.

Ulundi is (-1,-9) from Beijing. (1S, 9S) From what I can see he may have quite a bit of access to Gold and Flood Plains to boot. He appears to be near the southern end of the Continent so I expect him to send a Settler to (3,-7) claim the Pig, Gold, and Furs.

Nidaros is (10,4) from Beijing. I know little about this area, except that he is on the East Coast of the Continent and has a Seafood Resource or three.

I know nothing about where the Celts are, except they are probably on the northern side of the Jungle. They are the founders of Hinduism is all I know.

.............

This start has Axe Rush written all over it! I found two neighbors within 10 Tiles by 3000BC and I have very quick access to Copper. Add to this incredible Hammer capacity and 15 Forest Tiles. Here is what I think I should do.

1. Send the Worker to mine the newly found Copper then build Mines on the Grassland Hills.
2. Build a second Worker. When finished have him road to the Copper then start another Mine on the Grassland Hills.
3. Build a Barracks. This is because I will not yet have access to the Copper until the next turn.
4. Grind out Axemen.

By turn 50, Beijing should be Size 5 and producing 17 Hammers per turn. I should have a Barracks and 6 Axemen - and another 5 or more by Turn 60.

Is there anything else I should do for an Axe Rush?

I am thinking I move southward first to Shaka - then get Ragnar since I will still have a bunch of axes and I do not think either can defend themselves in time.

In the mean time I will send the northward warrior to scout more information about Ragnar. The wounded Warrior will take cover in Beijing. The Warrior coming in two more turns will scout out Ulundi.

I did not post a Save but I can if requested.

 

[Abegweit]

Definitely axe rush time.

Next tech should be writing. Open borders and scope out your victims.

After the warrior, build a barracks until the city reaches size 3. Then switch to a worker, chopping it out. Then back to the barracks. Actually, I think that I would train three workers - two for chopping and one for building roads.

 

[Harv]

Axe Rushing is not really that well developed in my arsenal. The nighmare I have is slowly creeping up on my opponent while he whips Guerilla 1 Archers on his Hilltop City. My preference for warfare is to attack with Catapults and whatever else I happen to have.

However, this start seems to demand an Axe Rush.

So the question I have is just how many archers I need to secure a successful rush?

I attached my save at Turn 25.

 

[vranasm]

definitely axe rush, can't check the save, but I would place my bet on Shaka

on non-hill city you should suffice with 2:1 axes:archers.

from now on don't build anything other then rax and axes and chop like hell, chop 2nd worker immediately before rax and axes.

timing with axe rushes is critical.
The map will be tough though. Ragnar and Brennus don't make stellar partners.

tw->writing->math probably (now I think about alternate universe where you go with ah->writing->lib in cap, 2 scientists bulb math, but from the bigger picture the choice for BW after ah was good one - you got info about strategic and that changed the way the map will be played out, it was correct decision)

as for the question about pottery x writing. Granaries are interesting and all, but teching pottery for granaries at this point of the game doesn't bring you forward. You won't be whipping and granary in cap would be home at the time you hit the happy cap anyway.
Cottages on non riverside tiles are lost project...

the horse in the north can be added with city either 1SE or 1SW (1SW is better for the marble, but 1SE gets eventually bananas like in 90 turns :-D), settling not optimal non-food city is acceptable if going for critical resource (which horses surely are)

edit:
one last thing... since it's ~10 tiles away you should preroad once you chop enough forest and have copper connected.
you can probably leave 1 worker chopping, the 2nd one roading towards Shaka

 

[Mylene]

Axe rush is a bit silly with this leader, there are other options to try out.
Sure, it will win you the game on whatever turn you take the 2 capitals from the lovely lunatics, but is that fun or has a learning factor. We all know the AI cannot defend vs. such an early rush on monarch. Meh

 

[Harv]

What is so silly about an Axe-Rush?

If I remember my Ancient History correctly, large portions of the Mediterranean World got Axe-Rushed (and Chariot Rushed) around 1200BC. Backward Civs who rolled crappy starts (but had lots of Forests, Hammers, Copper and Horse) overran and destroyed advanced civs who rolled HoF starts but wasted far too many hammers on Wonders and did not build enough Military to defend themselves. What followed was a dark age persisting for centuries as the invaders had to recover their crashed their and slowly grind their way to Mathematics and Currency.

What I do not know is if there used to be Forests in the region what is now the Ukraine that all got chopped in the Second Milennium BC to build all those Axemen.

........

Anyway - I followed the advice to tech The Wheel and Writing. I am thinking that I do not need any more tech for quite some time, so I will start Mathematics and set my slider to 0% because I am going to build lots of axes. Is this the correct move?

 

[GGracchus]

What is so silly about an Axe-Rush?

If I remember my Ancient History correctly, large portions of the Mediterranean World got Axe-Rushed (and Chariot Rushed) around 1200BC. Backward Civs who rolled crappy starts (but had lots of Forests, Hammers, Copper and Horse) overran and destroyed advanced civs who rolled HoF starts but wasted far too many hammers on Wonders and did not build enough Military to defend themselves. What followed was a dark age persisting for centuries as the invaders had to recover their crashed their and slowly grind their way to Mathematics and Currency.

What I do not know is if there used to be Forests in the region what is now the Ukraine that all got chopped in the Second Milennium BC to build all those Axemen.

........

Anyway - I followed the advice to tech The Wheel and Writing. I am thinking that I do not need any more tech for quite some time, so I will start Mathematics and set my slider to 0% because I am going to build lots of axes. Is this the correct move?

Similarly, I'm sure all Italy was once a giant forestland, but Rome chopped them all down for farms and used the hammers to build praetorians, archers, and catapults.

 

[devastator]

I would continue to tech normal and yes i would say math is a good tech to get, consider you are gonna chop so much. Change the slider if you see you are heading for a strike(you'll end up with some capture gold if you dont fail). Road to your victim, scout him out and chop.

 

[Ecori]

When starting this close to Shaka it is pretty much Axe rush or be Axe rushed.

Pottery-writing and slider at 0%. The gold you get before the rush can be crucial to avoid strike at 0%. Besides that always lower slider to 0% after writing until you build a library in your capital.

 

[Mylene]

I ment game-wise, not roleplay ~~
Axe rush with copper in your bfc on monarch = free win.
Since you made it a forum game, i just thought you could try something else.
If peoples want another axe-rush vs. AIs with 2 archers in their capitol, ok

 

[michmbk]

He's moving up 2 levels based on the first post - why not take the meaningful advantage that an axe rush provides?

With those neighbors, this game will be doubly tough if you don't rush one of them, considering you're moving up a couple levels. 10-12 axes should be plenty to take out Shaka, and claim the extra land.

If you want to go the peaceful route, the marble with IND will allow you to wonderspam pretty hard, but you'll want to devote at least 1 city to building mainly units. You're almost certain to have a war declaration from one of those nutcases, and they both build a lot of units. The one saving grace is that I think brennus tends to be an AI that the warmongers target, and he builds a decent number of units, so he might deflect their attention a bit. But Shaka is close to you, and if you don't take him out, he'll be sending a stack your way at some point.

 

[Harv]

Thank you for all of your advice. I played up to Turn 69 (taking some great pictures along the way) and saved.

Turn 25 - Moved the Worker to the Copper I just found.
Turn 27 - Warrior Built - Start Worker - Beijing is Size 3.
Turn 29 - Copper Mine Complete
Turn 32 - Reinvented The Wheel - It has probably been already invented many times
Turn 33 - Worker Built - Start Barracks
Turn 34 - Road to the Copper Mine Complete
Turn 36 - Barracks Built - Start Axeman
Turn 37 - One Grassland Hills Mine Complete
Turn 39 - Axeman 1 Built - Start Axeman - Beijing is Size 4 so I engaged in a little bit of Micromanagement.

Spoiler :

Often if I maximize my food then I maximize my production. What I worked out is the Governor's choice is to work the mine and grow in 9 turns for a net 99 Hammers and 99 Commerce.
If I work the Plains Wine Farm for 5 Turns and the Mine for 2 Turns I can increase that to 101 Hammers and 100 Commerce.
Production: 5x9+2x11+2x17=101
Commerce: 5x12+2x11+2x9=100


At Size 5 I switch to the mines and balance food production at 0 since I am done growing.

Turn 42 - Axeman 2 Built and Second Grassland Hills Mine complete.
Turn 44 - Writing - Start Mathematics and set the Slider to 0%.
Axeman 3 Built
Opened Borders with the Zulus and the Vikings.
Turn 47 - Axeman 4 Built
Turn 49 - Axeman 5 Built
Turn 51 - Axeman 6 Built
Here I finished the road to uMgungundluvu.
Turn 53 - Axeman 7 Built
Turn 54 - Axeman 8 Built
Turn 56 - Axeman 9 Built
Turn 57 - Axeman 10 Built
Turn 58 - Axeman 11 Built
Turn 60 - Axeman 12 Built
Turn 61 - Axeman 13 Built
Turn 62 - Axeman 14 Built

Turn 63 - DoW Shaka and jumped my troops right next door to uMgungundluvu. Somebody bonk me for being silly because I moved them onto the Hills instead of the Road. What was I thinking??!? This costs me one critical turn because I can push the army through.

Spoiler :

I managed a worker steal though.

Turn 64 - Axeman 15 Built
Captured uMgungundluvu and the Dice were very good to me as I lost nothing. This is about a 36% probability. My Warrior moved SE towards the Gold Mine to check out what is in Ulundi - two CG1 Archers.

Turn 65 - Shaka sent his CG1 Archer after my Warrior and killed it. Can you believe it? One of my Axes defeated it in a counterstrike. Shaka and I are even in boneheaded plays.
Axeman 16 built in Beijing - This has to be enough Axeman so I started a Library.

Turn 67 - Brennus built Stonehenge.
Captured Ulundi - It looks like I lost 3 Axemen in the process.

Spoiler :

Turn 69 - Library in Beijing - Start the Axeman Machine again
Destroyed Nobamba, losing 1 Axeman. The Zulus are no longer a problem. The next problem is going to be the Vikings. Observation is not really one of my strong points - especially when fighting a war. Check out what the Vikings have done while I was not looking.

Spoiler :

This is taken from one of my auto-saves. In this picture the Vikings do not have Iron.


In this picture the Vikings have discovered Iron Working in the past few turns.


And here they have built their Iron Mine. Sneaky.

I built 16 Axes so far:
4 were KIA against the Zulus.
7 have become CG2 Veterans.
2 have seen minor action and have 4XP.
3 have never seen action - but they were all ready at Nobamba.

From the Body Count it looks like I killed a total of 10 Zulu Archers.

Ulundi looks like a Sheep Bug Capital but uMgungundluvu looks brilliant! Soon I will have Flood Plains and Gold!

The Vikings do not have access to Iron yet. They will on Turn 70. Nidaros has a Barracks. For some reason they have a Settler and an escort but no place to put it. I see 5 Archers - most of them are green and 1 in Uppsala has CG1. The Vikings have built on flat land so that should make things easier.

I am thinking 10 to 12 Axes should be enough for the Vikings. Hopefully they are building Swordsmen instead of Shock Axemen. It should be too late by then.

I engaged in a little bit of Micro since the Library in Beijing is built.

Spoiler :

I ran 100% Taxation for 25 Turns and have 26/373 Beakers stored up in Mathematics. I am thinking about firing up the Research again and teching out Pottery because uMgungundlovu will soon need a Granary and Beijing is likely to go into expansion mode. Should I also go Fishing - Sailing so that I can trade with the Celts?

A Save is attached.

 

[michmbk]

I think your question is do you need to continue to war at this point? Ragnar can be a pain, but he's also manageable to get to pleased/friendly as you'll both likely be in HR a lot of the game - that plus shared religion can generally get you a long way with diplo with him.

Not to mention he will be difficult to dislodge with just axes at this point. You'll have to really hustle those axes over if he's about to hook up metal. He's going to likely have better promoted axes/swords than you, along with his archers. You got one of the troublesome AI out of the way, and I presume you have plenty of land to settle a nice chunk of cities.

With an IND leader, it might not be a bad idea to start settling a few more cities, get the marble under your control, and get out some of the nice marble wonders, which will be dirt cheap for you.

If you did that, you could use a few axes to fogbust and hunt barbs (maybe even getting one to level 4 to unlock heroic epic) and disband a few others if it's a drag on the economy.

I'll be interested to see if you can take him down with axes without crippling your economy. It's monarch, so you probably can get away with it, but I'm not sure it's the optimal play at this point. I guess it depends on whether or not you can send all your axes over towards him right away, or whether they need to heal a bit more. Time is of the essence now - every turn counts with him hooking up metal.

 

[Harv]

So I posted the save at precisely the right time - just before I came up with a boneheaded idea.

Granted, Axe Wars will get uglier and uglier as the turns progress. I estimate it would be Turn 80 and Ragnar will have had Iron for 10 Turns by the time I can get to him.

There is not much of a prize to be won by taking out Ragnar. Even better: I can wipe the floor with him once I get to Machinery.

The economy should not be an issue. My army is down to 12 Axemen and only costs 4gpt and that number will go down with expansion so there is no need to disband any Axes. Switching from War to Expansion is indeed an option. With Expansion I should easily be able to claim both the Marble and the Stone for some Wonders later.

So, for my cities:

Beijing - I can switch this to a Settler or a worker and run the mines again.
uMgungundlovu - Switch to Slavery and chopwhip the Library. I will have a ready-made Gold Mine 5 turns after I get the Library.
Ulundi - Lots and lots of Forest Tiles! I can save some of them for a Wonder later if I want.

I believe this is the correct turn to Revolt into Slavery. Ulundi is in disorder for two more turns so I am effectively only messing up 2 cities. Also I just finished a War.

My Backfill Technologies are:
Fishing / Sailing
Pottery
Hunting
Mysticism
Masonry

Pottery and Masonry would be very useful shortly - Should I tech them now or wait for somebody to tech the Alphabet and do some backfill trades?

 

[michmbk]

So I posted the save at precisely the right time - just before I came up with a boneheaded idea.

Granted, Axe Wars will get uglier and uglier as the turns progress. I estimate it would be Turn 80 and Ragnar will have had Iron for 10 Turns by the time I can get to him.

There is not much of a prize to be won by taking out Ragnar. Even better: I can wipe the floor with him once I get to Machinery.

The economy should not be an issue. My army is down to 12 Axemen and only costs 4gpt and that number will go down with expansion so there is no need to disband any Axes.

This is good thinking - when i was moving up in levels I would run some practice games where I would test things like disbanding a bunch of my army to see how much it saved on maintenance, and then reloading to try to get better at optimizing things. Now you have great fogbusters and military police as you expand..

Pottery & masonry are probably important, as is claiming marble and stone. On monarch, i usually self-tech alphabet, because the AI is so slow getting there. I think you'll be in good shape heading to those three techs first, then up the aesthetics line - every wonder up that line will be a snap if you're IND with marble/stone. Just make sure you're continuing to expand - now that you have the land, claim it.

You'll want to watch when your tech rate starts to slow down meaningfully due to expansion, and when it does, currency, calendar, COL, monarchy are the usual techs to rebuild the economy. Monarchy is especially nice for you with wine and hereditary rule (Rags favorite civic).

And don't worry about giving into any demands rags makes - making him happy will likely focus him on other targets, allowing you to expand & blow him away later with tech superiority.

 

[CHEESE!]

Ni Hao Civ Fanatics!

Nimen hao would have been better.

 

[Harv]

I spent the weekend hosting a couple of friends and we went to a couple of Theme Parks (200 +1 +2XP for Air Units)

Okay - I idled the Axe-Grinding Machine and tried to build an Economy.

Turn 69 - The Warrior no longer needs to monitor the Vikings - He did his job of locating the Iron Mine. He is now exploring northward to find the Celts.
Turn 70 - Switched Beijing to building a Worker. Switched Research to Pottery.
Turn 72 - Worker in Beijing - Start Settler
Turn 73 - Somebody built the Great Wall
Turn 75 - Pottery
Turn 76 - Switched Research to Masonry
Turn 77 - Library in uMgungundlovu - Start Granary
Turn 78 - Settler in Beijing - Start Granary
Turn 79 - Somebody founded Judaism
Turn 80 - Masonry

Founded Shanghai

Spoiler :

There are not too many city sites to write home about - but this grabs two food resources and some green tiles.

Turn 81 - Switched Research to Fishing and Sailing
Turn 83 - Fishing
Granary in Beijing - Start the Pyramids
Granary in uMgungundlovu - Start Barracks
Turn 84 - Library in Ulundi - Start Granary
Turn 87 - Sailing - continue Researching Mathematics
Granary in Ulundi - Start Barracks
Turn 88 - Switched Production in Beijing to Settler - I probably should not have done this but I am looking for Stone.
Turn 90 - Settler in Beijing
Turn 91 - Granary in Shanghai - Start Library
Turn 92 - Worker in uMgungundlovu

Founded Guangzhou on the Stone in the Desert

Spoiler :

-02

Turn 94 - Mathematics - Set Slider to 0% and grind towards Currency
Turn 97 - Worker in uMgungundlovu and Settler in Ulundi
Turn 98 - Barracks in uMgungundlovu - Start Axeman

Founded Nanjing on the Ruins

Spoiler :

Turn 100 - Library in Shanghai - Start Barracks
Turn 101 - Axeman in uMgungundlovu - Start Settler
Barracks in Ulundi - Start Settler
Switched research to Hunting
Turn 102 - Hunting
Barracks in Shanghai - Start Worker

Turn 104 - The Pyramids in Beijing - Start Aqueduct

Spoiler :

This pretty much settles the question about how I intend to (re)build the economy.

Turn 106 - Settler in uMgungundlovu and Ulundi - Start Chariot.
Granary in Guangzhou - Start Library
Revolted into Representation - I wanted the Settlers to be en-route

Turn 107 - Founded Xian

Spoiler :

Another city not worth writing home about - but it claims Fur.

Turn 108 - Worker in Shanghai - Start Chariot
Somebody built the Oracle.

Turn 109 - Granary in Nanjing - Start Lighthouse

Turn 111 - Chariot in uMgungundlovu and Shanghai - Start Aqueduct

Founded Chengdu

Spoiler :

This city claims the Marble.

At -2gpt at 0% Slider does that count as crashing the economy?

Turn 112 - Chariot in Ulundi - Start Aqueduct
Brennus completes the Temple of Artemis

Turn 113 - Aqeduct in Beijing - Start the Hanging Gardens

Turn 114 - Brennus completes the Kashi Vishwanath.
Somebody founded Confucianism.

............

So here I am at 1AD with 8 Cities and no capacity to grow more until I finally grind out Currency. I expect that to take a few more turns yet. The Hanging Gardens will be complete in either 4 or 6 Turns - depending on how you count them. The Representation Scientists are almost ready to go. When Currency is done I should be able to build a few more cities.

Brennus is expanding quickly and he has a Shrine and a couple of Wonders to help him. Ragnar appears to be stuck. As I had been warned, they are taking *forever* to research the Alphabet.

For Research I am thinking I should have Currency shortly after I finish the Hanging Gardens. Then I will need Code of Laws for Courthouses. Maintenence is eating my economy. Iron Working to clear out the Jungle and Ulundi ought to be hiding Iron somewhere. Then Calendar for the Resources - and then Aesthetics and Literature to unlock the Wonders for Specialists.

There are still forests to be chopped out near Shanghai and Ulundi. So Shanghai will have the Artist type of Wonders like the Parthenon and Ulundi will have the Great Library because it is looking more likely to be a Great Person Farm.

Military building will have to start up again soon. I know what Brennus is doing but I wonder what Ragnar is up to. Should I send a Chariot over to check him out again? Is he building a large stack of Swordsmen?

Anyway here is my situation at 1AD.

Spoiler :