Radio-The Final Monarch

Radio Noer

The Devourer
Joined
Sep 13, 2010
Messages
1,383
Location
The Old Northwest Territory
Hello everybody I have another game for you guys today, I've decided if I win this with any sense of ease, I will move up to Emperor (hence "The Final Monarch")and start facing some real challenges. My previous two Monarch games can be found here (as Cyrus of Persia) and here (as Bismarck of Germany)

Settings:
Monarch
Normal speed
Standard/Fractal/Low seas
Huts/events OFF

This game I rolled


Let's see, possibility of early BW, UU is a cav replacement, and a bonus to space parts if I go for Space Race, seems ok, however my past experiences made me doubt Stalin when I really should have doubted my closed in start and horrible strategies (this was long ago you see...)

Anyways, the start:


I moved the scout 1 NE of the settler to reveal things to the north, turns out it's another (dry) corn, I'm thinking SIP because this looks like quite a nice start with the two corns, a grasslands cow, and marble.

I'm thinking going either AH or AGR to start and BW fairly early to maybe get an Axe rush in unless I have bountiful land to expand unlike my previous game as Bismarck.

Most importantly, have fun and maybe learn (or teach) a thing or two :)

The Save
 
In the future I'd turn off fractal. Those maps often end up severely nerfing some civs, so either you have too much an advantage, or an disadvantage. You'd have to play a lot more fractals than Pangaea before you can get a well rounded estimate on how you are really performing.
 
Blah - espionage cost me the OCC win - lost by a few turns...

Spoiler :

It started out so well - every early wonder I wanted, I got...including this obvious one:



Nice early forge. The tech pace in this game was painfully slow until the late game - makes sense given all the warring AIs. Lib was mine, as expected:



The problem in this game...Gandhi got HUGE, as in 20+ cities huge - he filled in all the space vacated by my only having one city, and for some reason, Monte never really messed with him much. I assumed those two would be at war all game, but it wasn't the case. They weren't even in the same religion - WTF???

I still gave it a decent run - this meant 9 free techs:



I kept trying to bribe people into war with Gandhi, and finally got Freddy to war with him - Freddy got destroyed. I could never bribe Monte into war with him, as he kept fighting Shaka (again, WTF???) on the other continent.

Meanwhile, I built 4 SS docking bays in this game. The first 3 all got destroyed, which set my ship back by about 12 turns.

So even though I built Sistine, Gandhi still managed a cultural victory, a couple turns after I launched my ship. The stupid espionage at the end killed me. I couldn't get him to switch civics, so nothing went my way in this one.



How on earth can Monte be fighting with Freddy and Shaka all game, and ignore Gandhi? I thought this would be a cakewalk once I saw those two - I figured they'd be fighting all game. Guess I should have built a few more spies and tried to mess with Gandhi more - I never thought culture would be a risk once I built Sistine...I don't think I took the optimal space path either, as I don't go space too often. I also cleared all the late culture stuff (Broadway, Rock & Roll) - he still pulled it off.

Clearly the AGG trait went to waste in this one - I generated too many artists too, which didn't help matters:



 
Decided to experiment a little bit and take my time...

Spoiler :

 
shadow to 1 AD

somehow ended with spamming a bit wonders in capital and claiming land... sitting at 11 cities and capital has stonehenge, TGL, Oracle, Parth, ToA. Somehow missed out on Mids which is a bit shame...

popped GM (settled in cap), GP (shrined confu), GA (settled in cap)

Spoiler :


I think there is only 1 issue with the map... vast area of desert and a lot of land to claim for players...

screens
Spoiler :








would you believe no one from those 3 AI's teched alpha yet?? Already finished currency

 
Grrr....I should have played this as a normal game instead of an OCC - looking at vranasm's screens, this would have been such a cakewalk.
 
Alright, had a fairly uneventful session but gained some important map knowledge and such.

First off I SIP'd


And then proceeded to explore a bit, allowing me to find my neighbors.

First I met Fredrick of Germany, I haven't played against him much but I assume he is the less warmongering of the two leaders.


Then I met Monty, the crazy loon


And finally Gandhi, notice that he and Monty founded Buddhism and Hinduism, should be fun to watch them fight.


During this time I settled two cities, St. Petersburg for Horses and Pigs and Novgorod for all that shiny gold.


Now I have another settler and I'm looking for a spot to settle, made much more difficult by that large desert to the west, so I had a couple ideas and thought I would share them.

Two to the south


A couple to the North


Any ideas or suggestions, I've never seen a desert this large before except on Earth 18.

Other than that Tech went Ag, AH, BW, Masonry, Myst, Wheel, Pottery, and now probably HBR. I'm also considering using my horses to chariot rush Fredrick to get him out of the way quickly but I'm not totally commited yet.
 
I wouldn't settle one off the coast - the cow and rice can probably be two cities - cow with all the FP looks tasty. I'd settle 2N of the cow, and then settle as much land as you can aggressively toward Gandhi. He'll never DOW you, and with all that gold and FP, you can handle the maintenance.
 
Grrr....I should have played this as a normal game instead of an OCC - looking at vranasm's screens, this would have been such a cakewalk.

well claiming land is one thing... the other is tech order...
would you believe that in the shadow it's around 500 AD and non of us has Alphabet yet??!

So that basically means I don't have IW, pottery, sailing and some more...
With marble in bfc and ind leader going with poly->aesth->lit looked like clear choice...

I already started GA with music GA and will have to selftech that bloody thing at 500 AD... unbelievable
 
well claiming land is one thing... the other is tech order...
would you believe that in the shadow it's around 500 AD and non of us has Alphabet yet??!

So that basically means I don't have IW, pottery, sailing and some more...
With marble in bfc and ind leader going with poly->aesth->lit looked like clear choice...

I already started GA with music GA and will have to selftech that bloody thing at 500 AD... unbelievable

@vranasm, you played immortal too much. :D obviously, you over-estimated the teching speed of AIs on this level. i however, played too much noble and now have a tendency of self-teching everything needed. btw, if i were you, i'd keep all those GPs for golden ages. Maybe sent the GM out for at least 900 cash.
 
Would not try to settle too aggressively towards the chinese, there is plenty of good land where you are. Let them settle theirs and then take it from them.
Settling very aggressively towards them just incurs maintenance, the workers have to walk a lot, the settlers as well, and there is no chokepoint anyway so you can not block off land.
The copper spot looks especially horrible. Don't.

What are your mid-term plans? Do you need the stone for some wonder? Then I'd settle that. Otherwise maybe the cow/flood plains spot South.

Actually, I would first settle 1W of the rice next to the desert. This makes a tremendous commerce city (one gold, two oasis, six grassland and a rice), is very close to your capital, and will be useful very, very soon (chop the forest for a monument, borders pop and you can use 2 Oasis and the gold.).

Then either the stone, or the floodplains (but please on the coast. Use a second city to work the rest of the floodplains).
 
@vranasm, you played immortal too much. :D obviously, you over-estimated the teching speed of AIs on this level. i however, played too much noble and now have a tendency of self-teching everything needed. btw, if i were you, i'd keep all those GPs for golden ages. Maybe sent the GM out for at least 900 cash.

wanted to do something different for a change... so settled persons in capital was the way for me ;-)
the only problem with the approach is that I didn't focus on Mids... was dumb oversight. And the Mids even went something like
Spoiler :
500 BC
to make this oversight even worse ;-).
 
wanted to do something different for a change... so settled persons in capital was the way for me ;-)
the only problem with the approach is that I didn't focus on Mids... was dumb oversight. And the Mids even went something like
Spoiler :
500 BC
to make this oversight even worse ;-).

when did you get the stone resource online? it seems pretty far. building mids naked doesn't sound like a good idea anyway. btw, who built the Mids, neighbor? :backstab:
 
Yep, you need to self tech alphabet on monarch - I remember that much. Emperor was the first level where I could get away from teching alpha, although sometimes even on that level I would self tech it.

Mids almost doesn't seem necessary here - there's so much commerce that I'd rather just slap down a couple cottage cities, and use HR to grow them. It's not a bad play with an IND leader, even before stone, but the easy way out is cottaging up all those FP.
 
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