Trying to make this a learning experience...

[John117]

Hey I know that this has come up a few times but I thought I'd still give it a shot. So here it is; a call for help:

I've been trying to make the jump to Monarch for some time now. I win pretty consistently at Prince but I just can't seem to get over this hump. Take my last game; basic setup: I'm playing as Huayna Capac, Large Map, Medium and Small, Ancient Era, Normal Speed. I'm given a mediocre starting position but I decide to play it out anyway. I explore quickly and am rewarded with two free techs from the goodie huts. I then find out that I'm pretty isolated except for Ramseses of Egypt to the South East. I stretch myself pretty thin to build a city in an excellent spot to box Egypt in. It pays off and I expand to fill the rest of the continent; the empire is booming.

Conscience of the isolation, I grab confucism to make sure I get a religion. I also manage to pick up Stonehenge, The Parthenon, Shwendagon Palace, Statue of Zeus, the Oracle and the appropriate shrine. Things are going well and I prepare for a quick war to drive the inferior Egypt of the continent. The war starts well, and I quickly take his northern cities with minimal losses. Simultaneously I send out my new Caravels to make contact with the rest of the world. It all goes downhill from here.

I quickly get bogged down fighting in circles around an inland sea in Egyptian territory (two front war I know..) and I can't seem to project enough power anywhere to be decisive and hold the territory at the same time. As well I quickly find out that everyone else I meet in the world has a 33% or more lead on me in their score, and are several big techs ahead. Aware that a war with Egypt is no longer a viable option, I try to end it, but he either refuses to deal, or will settle for nothing less than everything I took back and then some (despite my superior forces). My economy is being crippled by now and I even loose a turn to some of my units being on Strike.

By now it's the 1800 and I've finally driven Egypt of the continent although he has somehow managed to fight a hec of a war with me while rapidly expanding onto other islands and now has a 4-6 tech lead on me and a comparable score (he still refuses to make peace and I have to start a golden age just to salvage my economy for a few turns).

Finally, just as I make plans to launch a final amphibious strike on his capitol (using my galleys against his frigates) and raze it to sue for peace. I find that Montezuma and Sulleyman have just sailed half way around the world with a declaration of war to drop cavalry onto my isolated and indefencable west coast (also where my capitol is). I'm now at war with three nations all who have several generations worth of technology on me and on the last turn I learn that during my race to get paper, the Apollo program was completed some where else in the world.

What went wrong? For maybe the tenth time in a row my postion is untenable and I'm off to start a new game. I thought I had everything going for me this time; I know how to use slavery, I was running a cottage economy, I played the diplomacy tables to keep allies on my side, and I even indulged myself several time by reloading when I lost entire stacks (that all had 80%> chance of victory) to Egyptian cities. I've included the saved game from the position I'm quitting, and as I get ready to start another round I'm still wondering; where did it all break down...

I'd appreciate any critique that you guys could give of the saved game, or even just your general thoughts on the outline I just gave; I'm getting tired of this happening.

 

[1889]

I haven't had time to load the save yet but I suspect you may need to adjust your fighting techniques for the more capable AI. Monarch is a bigger jump than you may think, the AI has significant advantage over what you may be used to at Prince. Even if they are weak when you invade the AI can now build units much faster than you and pay less to support them. So while your first attacks may go well things can bog down quickly. I usually can't conquer them in one go, but rather have to take a few bites out of an AI before they can be eliminated.

Also since you are attempting to conquer you may find it more helpful to capture wonders and religious capitols rather than found those things yourself.

 

[Joshua368]

Ha ha, I'm sorry, but this has to be the worst game I've ever seen. It's nearing the turn of the twentieth century, all the AIs are playing around with their planes and televisions, and you're just barely entering the renaissance! At with less than 50 beakers per turn and a total GNP ten times less than the leading AI, it's no wonder!

And it's no surprise why. Your "cottage economy" consists of like a grand total of ten towns throughout your empire. Not that your cities could work much more, why are they all so small? Your largest city is size 8! At around AD 1880! What happened? I see that your entire empire is smothered in war weariness, how long has it been like this? If you saw the war was going too slowly and your entire empire was dying, you should've taken peace centuries ago. Now with the recent declarations it's too late.

Also I can't seem to find your army... did they all die taking Thebes, or are they en route to your captured city and I missed them? I see like four units in Thebes itself and about three city raiders in another nearby city. Where's your stack?

I didn't really pay attention to your diplomacy, but I did notice that you're trading around four resources for a single luxury. That's probably something you should avoid.

So yeah, this game's a joke. It seems like you have a lot more problems than the monarch difficulty level, I can't see this empire winning on noble.

This seems to be a much more serious problem than just monarch, and judging by where you stand in the tech tree it's obviously not just a recent problem. My main advice is to get your cities bigger! By this point in the game your cities should be nearing size 20, certainly not stifling at 6! Bigger cities will be able to work more tiles, and much more cottages. Your "cottage economy" should have whole cities surrounded by dozens of towns and working them all! Make sure you settle near food resources and build granaries so the cities can grow. And of course get those happy and health caps up through religion, buildings, resources, etc. And if war weariness becomes too much and you don't use the culture slider, it may be time to stop the war!

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Joshua368:
What part of the OP asking for a critique meant that he was asking to be insulted? There are better ways to say what you said.

 

[John117]

Joshua368 well thank you for taking the time to look at the game but there wasn't much in the way of suggestions besides obvious statements. You'll notice my cities (once around 16) are now so small because war weariness and slaving units has prevented any expansion and the cost of maintaining so many units has crippled the economy.

Let me ask two direct questions then directed also to 1889. How can you get an AI to make peace without loosing much of your gains? I knew my war was going badly, but if I'm just going to give everything back in exchange for 10 turns of peace then what was the point in even going to war in the first place? All the way through I had superior forces so I don't get how am I suppose to make peace on terms favourable to me?

Second question; yes Joshua I know that what you are looking at barely qualifies as a civilization and is last in almost every aspect of game play but even at the height of the empire, before the invasion of Egypt when I first made contact with other civs they still were about 33% ahead of me in score (compared to par when I would play on prince), how do they get ahead so fast? And what can I do to keep the edge through the middle eras?

 

[1889]

Lets face it, you don't really want peace with the AI you just want them to leave you alone until your ready to strike right? AI diplomacy considers your relative strength, so if you are strong the AI will make better terms and fewer demands. If you are weak you will be surprise attacked and peace will be hard to achieve at any price. The main trick then is managing production to keep a strong military and manage your diplomacy to keep the AI under control until you can take them out one at a time. Here are a couple things I do.

• Forget about founding a religion. You can get by pretty well without it early on. I sign up for open borders instead; the AI likes you and often does the work of spreading religion. Adopt that religion and you'll be even better buds. It also allows me to scout out the neighborhood and plan my attacks. You may miss the income for a while but building up religion takes hammers that are better used for capturing a healthy religious capitol. (Same with early wonders, unless you are industrious and have marble or whatever.)
• Trade, trade, trade. Trading your stuff away lets you get some advantage from it and prevents the AI from demanding it. You will hopefully only fight one AI at a time so with no tech brokering you only have to keep your latest techs from your next opponent. If someone does demand something it's often a good idea to give it up, they'll get theirs in good time.
• Whip sparingly. Your empire runs on worked tiles, so excessive whipping is suicide. Whipping is best used when a city is about to grow beyond its happiness limit.
• Stay focused on your goals. I'm a warmonger so maybe you can win with a more peaceful strategy but I don't have any advice for that. You do need some buildings but mostly you need a top notch military. So build the buildings that you need then build units. For example: moving your palace is expensive and not as effective as building courthouses everywhere (the extra espionage points also help you keep track of the other AI's progress). Since you want science generally higher than 50% libraries will do more good than markets.
• Build your national wonders! It’s a shame to see an industrious civ go the whole game without the benefit of National or Heroic Epics. Many people spend too long waiting for just the perfect place. Those two provide such an enormous benefit I am always anxious to make use of them as soon as possible.

Do you happen to have any earlier saves of this game you'd like to share?

 

[John117]

Thanks 1889! thats really helpful. I guess it never occured to me that having more than one of a resource is pretty useless before corporations so I might as well trade it. As well your point about National Wonders is well taken, I will often wait forever (to the point that it doesn't matter) to make sure that the Epics go to the perfect city instead of just getting it up and running.

Unfortunately I don't have any earlier saves of the game because I always save over the same file. But I think now that the turning part when the empire started to fall apart was when I got to focussed on completely driving my opponent off the continent and lost sight of the bigger picture.

One more question; you talk about having a strong military, does this mean always upgrading your archers and warriors into stronger and stronger units for city defence. I know obviously the answer is yes but specifically in my game you'll see I hadn't got around to it in the more isolated regions because the gold was better spent elsewhere and this allowed Montuzema to rip into the other half of my empire with his cavalry.

Thanks again!

 

[Joshua368]

By the way, in this particular your economy isn't crashed because of unit or upkeep costs, but rather inflation. You're losing more money to inflation than almost anything else, and your empire simply isn't able to handle it. Unfortunately there's no way to cut down inflation other than to have your empire up to speed faster, if it takes too long you sort of get screwed.

The main problem with your actual empire I see (since your cities used to be larger) is lack of infrastructure. Most of your cities have granaries, libraries, courthouses, religious buildings... and little else. Now obviously you're trying to remedy this with markets everywhere, which will help in both your monetary and happiness problems, but those should've been up closer to 1 AD and obviously it's a case of too little too late.

What exactly were all your cities building for the last eight hundred years? Granary, courthouse, library, temple, monestary, and...? Only units? I'd hope that's the case, production can't be poor enough that it took this long to only get those buildings up. Also hope you got some of those cheap industrious forges up everywhere, I don't recall if you had those or not. Anyway just curious here, thanks.

I guess the main issue is the war... how exactly did you fight it? I understand you encountered more resistance than you expected, but how big were your stacks? How much seige? How did you attack the cities? How many units on average did you lose taking each one? I'm a little surprised because looking at the city names it looks like you really hurt the Egyptians, capturing about half of their empire, including their capital. Normally by this point the AI would be broken and weak and crying for peace, how many units did he kill to give himself a false sense of winning the war?

On a side note: diplomacy. No one likes you. Cautious at best. Next time I'd recommend not adopting your own religion, expecially if you go and kill the only guy you spread it to. When isolated from most of the world, it's usually best to go into free religion upon contact, and maybe even paganism, just so you can start making friends. You had the Shwedagon Paya, so there's no reason why you couldn't take FR. You can still found, spread and shrine your own religion for profit if you want to, you'll still get all the money.


To sum it up, I'd probably say your biggest flaw in this game was lack of infrastructure. Before the war you should've had these markets set up to support your economy, and once you knew it would be costly you should've gotten some colloseums and theatres up asap so you could move that slider to keep your cities happy. Losing all your science to culture is far better than your cities curling up and dying!

 

[1889]

Well unless it’s an emergency I upgrade selectively. Since you have so many settled generals you can easily produce units with 10 xps so in your case I wouldn't generally upgrade units with less than 10 xps. In fact to keep upkeep costs down I usually disband inexperienced warriors, archers and what not. Now upkeep isn't currently a concern for you but the way I look at it is if I'm paying money to keep units they better be doing something to warrant it.

When you factor inflation you are spending 4 gpt to keep a scout, a missionary and a great artist. I would disband the first, gift the second and use the third. Not a big deal but compound that over a few hundred turns.

 

[John117]

Joshua368; I guess inflation is one of the game concepts that I haven't got a handle yet on. I know it costs money to maintain stuff and that that cost goes up but it's still a pretty big mystery to me how my income can fluctuate each turn just because there are so many factors governing it.

As for the war, losses were almost absurd. It was on the scale of 42 catapults and over 70 macemen, swordmen, spearmen and other combat units. I know this drives up the war weariness but I didn't realize that it would also make Rameses think he was winning; I thought it was only our relative strengths that mattered. As for tactics I would usually use 4-5 catapults on a city, loose them all, then take the city with 5-6 mixed combat units. When they had finished counteracting on the next turn I would expect to be left with 2 or 3 units. The hardest part was always defending the city against future attacks especcially when I am so far away from the empire.

Finally I think your last point about the culture slider was key; that's one of the main things I'm missing. The only time I would ever use it would be to rush a cultural victory. I see now that using it selectively throughout history can keep the civ going through the harder war times.

Thanks for all the help guys, I really appreciate it

 

[FriendoftheDork]

OK I made a huge post but accidental hit a key somewhere near left shift and the window closed (thank you microsoft! )

So instead I'll upload a save 2 turns later where I have made some fixes... try to look for changes from your own game. Losing Cuzco was not a "plan" but inevitable.

I got 75 GPT by trading your useless resources for gold instead of more useless resources (cows etc). This enabled 100% science, gunpowder in 8 turns (if I live that long)

I sacrificed population in those cities with 2 or more angry citizens, they don't produce anyway so no loss.

I changed to free religion before losing Cuzco, hopefully it will help make you more popular as you surely need friends. Only loss was 2 xp anyway, and you get a trade boost and lower upkeep instead.

Oh, and you seem to have lost too many of your units, particarily swordsmen, macemen and catapults. I don't know how you've managed this, did you build some and launched them one at a time or something?

Ok here is my file: View attachment 193445


Oh BTW, I never touch the culture slider.

 

[bestbrian]

Hey, John, if you'd like, start a new game, and post the saves as well as a summary of what you're doing and thinking every bunch of turns, or so. This way we can see your decision making and maybe offer some helpful advice and constructive criticism.

 

[FriendoftheDork]

I agree with best brian. BTW I tried to play some more just to see if I could survive, and as you can see in 1909 I managed to get peace with all my belligerents.

It's a sure lose anyway as Saladin is going for space win and Pacal for a diplo win. But fun to try to hold out nonetheless.
View attachment 193446

 

[Kesshi]

John117,

From reading your first post it sounds like you didn't have enough or the right units to seige the war on Egypt. I can't open up your save* so I need to ask where was Thebes? Ramses, an Industrial/Spiritual leader, is a wonderspammer and will often spam wonders in his capital and early cities. If Thebes was coastal and nearby your blocking city then you could have simply waited for him to build many of the wonders and go claim the city for yourself.

*I haven't upgraded to the latest patch yet.

Also, if the AI refuses to accept peace, sometimes taking another city you don't want and offering that back for peace is a way to get around that. It sounds like you needed to end the war a lot earlier than you did, and as soon as you noticed you were in trouble you should have focused on ending that war ASAP. If giving Egypt back a city or two would have prevented you from falling behind the rest of the world, wouldn't it be worth it to give up a few cities?

I want emphasize on the possability that you didn't bring enough units so I'm going to touch on that again. Do you setup a dedicated military city? (Granary & Barracks only until Metal Casing, rest of the time spam military units.) If not, you should think about it. If your empire gets into economical trouble and you find yourself with "enough" military units (Is that even possible? ) then you can have that city start building gold until you've recovered.

I encourage you to go read madscientist's latest Role Play Challenge Lawless Hammurabi. Regardless of how incredibly enteratining that thread was, I want you to look at the number of units he attacks with. He had tons of units in his SoD without Courthouses! A super-large army is possible to manage, but it takes experience knowing HOW big of an army you need. Practice makes perfect.

Word of advice, whenever I run into a map that kicks my butt, I usually replay it. With the knowledge of where the resources are and how I lost last time I can usually step up to the challenge and win, teaching me what to look out for and what to do to avoid the loss that happened to me on the first game. I've reloaded one Deity map 6 times and lost 4 times and won twice. That game was where I taught myself how to manage a small hybrid economy.

Edit:

bestbrian offered some great advice, too. Start up a new game, and save at 4000BC, 3000BC, 2000BC, 1000BC and 0AD. Post the saves and talk about what you did and why you did it. I'm sure there will be people who can open the saves willing to help you out.

 

[Joshua368]

The main issue here, above any thing else, is poor war tactics. Not entirely sure what you did wrong, but it killed the game:

- Made the war last far longer than it should have
- Gave you way more war weariness than you'd want (and is this under the weariness-nerfed 3.17 patch? Because if so, dang)
- Made peace unlikely because the AI thinks its winning
- Shattered your power rating (half of Ramesses, who is down to islands!) which in turn made you a juicier target for Monty and pals
- Kept your cities preoccipied building hordes of units, way more than what should have been nessecary, and thus keeping them from much-needed civilian builds
- No standing army after the war (almost all dead) leaving you extremely prone to new attacks (hello monty!)
- Prolonged war, high war weariness, and lack of civilian builds conspired together to shatter your science rate, stalemating you in the early renaissance era while the AIs are starting to leave the industrial
- And falling behind two eras in tech pretty much means game over

All this from losing units! Typically you do not want to lose too many units during a war. Sure there are suicide seige, but other than that you want the bulk of your army to survive and get highly promoted. Yes, there will be occassional flukes where a good unit will die at 95% odds or so (80% are not very good odds!) but overall your army should remain strong. Early rushes are an exception to these, you'll lose most of an early rush army, but after seige things change. So just go through the list here and let me know if you follow it or not.

- Bombard city's defenses down to zero (or close enough) with seige. This is pretty much common sense, but you failed to mention it in your recap, so are you doing this? This can be very painfully slow pre-cannons when your enemy has castles, but it's worth sitting there with a dozen seige units (some promoted to accuracy) to whittle them down.

Plus you can use stationary spies rather than seige to speed up the process if you have enough espionage focused on your target. Have the spy make a city revote to remove cultural defense for a turn, or if that's too expensive try simply destroying the castle.

- Suicide seige in there. By the time longbows come onto the scene, I really like using trebuchets with City Raider II have a nice success rate, but catapults work too. Typically the first seige (with really poor odds) want to have barrage to make more collateral damage when they die, and transitioning to city raider for survival once the odds get better. How long this takes usually depends on the number of defenders.

- Mop up with regular units. These should all be over 90% odds, preferably over 95%. City raider obviously want to go first to take on the slightly tougher defenders, to keep them in the gunpowder era be sure to upgrade your maces to rifles/grenades to keep city raider. Very few of these units should die.

All in all, I wouldn't want to lose more than four units taking a city, and preferably less.

As for counterattacks... stack defense. If their army has a few extra units running around, keep a few counter unit in your stack at all times. Crossbows for maces, pikemen for knights and elephants, etc.

On the other hand, if your opponent has a large seige-filled stack sitting around (from preparing for war or a previous war) locate it with scouts before the war, and lure it somewhere so that you can strike it before it strikes you. When it comes to seige, the attacker will win due to collateral damage, so you want to get his stack into a position where you destroy it, throwing non-city raider seige at it and then mopping up. Destroying their army will also pretty much crush your opponents' spirits.

Sometimes if the situation calls for it (the stack is rather close to my borders) I will actually not invade on the first few turns after declaring war, and let my enemy march their stack into my borders, preferably onto open ground, where I can easily attack it first. There, my biggest problem in the war gone! And as a plus side, for destroying it completely within my culture, all the war weariness goes to my opponent!

So yeah, basically, don't lose so many units and you'll do much better.

 

[John117]

Kesshi and Joshua368, that's some great stuff about the tactics. Previously my SoD would rarely have more than 5 siege units and 8 combat units and after reading your posts I'm not even sure that counts as a SoD...

I guess it was also a mistake that when the initial force was whittled down, I reinforced it one or two units at a time by sending the unit as soon as it was made to try and rejoin the main force. Next time I'll try and keep the units back and operate them in larger groups. Kesshi; Thebes was at the bottom of the penisula and was the last city I captured so not much opportunity there. I also didn't but much emphasis on counter defensive and actually I probably carelessly lost about 6 or so lone catapults to guerrila Knights suddenly coming out of the fog.

All in all, I gather I had the right idea (diplomacy aside) leading up to the war but my tactics sucked. In retrospect it seems pointless wether or not Egypt has any cities on the continent if I'm fighting Cavalry with Quecha elsewhere in the world. FriendoftheDork; it's interesting to see what you can do with an untenable position like that. It almost makes me want to go back and see what I can do to salvage it just for some experience.

I guess now I'm going to start my next and try and be a warmongerer to get some experience. Previously I was more of a pacifist (as if you couldn't tell) but I'd heard that declaring war more often was key in the higher difficulty levels. Hopefully practice will make perfect....

 

[Joshua368]

Kesshi and Joshua368, that's some great stuff about the tactics. Previously my SoD would rarely have more than 5 siege units and 8 combat units and after reading your posts I'm not even sure that counts as a SoD...

Heh, yeah, for medieval wars try around a dozen seige (and mostly what you'll be replacing from the home front, just make sure your seige isn't left undefended around enemy lines) a dozen or more macemen, some elephants if possible, and 3 or so crossbows and pikes for defence. Also a sentry promoted horse archer is nice for more visibility.

And yeah, don't sweat it, practice makes perfect. I definitely recommend reloading the 4000 BC save if possible and trying the game again. I just replayed a failure from the start at a different angle and dominated, and it's a pretty awesome experience.

Few extra side tips to help out, before I forget. You may or may not already know these two things, but might as well throw them out there.

- Do not promote your units as soon as they are created, save some promotions for the field of battle. Promote your defensive units immediately (you don't want an unpromoted unit defending!) but your offensive seige and melee/gunpowder can be saved until you see your opposition. For example, you may want to wait and see whether to give a mace shock (against melee) or cover (against archers) depending on what he faces. Also for >99.9% mop-up units, you might not want to promote at all until after the battle, because if they take damage the promotion can heal them faster.

- Use one of your first great generals on Medic III unit, usually given to a chariot for speed. Combat, Medic I, Medic II, Medic III, and then Morale if he has extra. With every unit being able to heal in one to three turns, even behind enemy lines, they greatly speed up your battle. Just don't leave him exposed!

All right, see ya. Good luck out there.

 

[FriendoftheDork]

Kesshi and Joshua368, that's some great stuff about the tactics. Previously my SoD would rarely have more than 5 siege units and 8 combat units and after reading your posts I'm not even sure that counts as a SoD...

I guess it was also a mistake that when the initial force was whittled down, I reinforced it one or two units at a time by sending the unit as soon as it was made to try and rejoin the main force. Next time I'll try and keep the units back and operate them in larger groups. Kesshi; Thebes was at the bottom of the penisula and was the last city I captured so not much opportunity there. I also didn't but much emphasis on counter defensive and actually I probably carelessly lost about 6 or so lone catapults to guerrila Knights suddenly coming out of the fog.

All in all, I gather I had the right idea (diplomacy aside) leading up to the war but my tactics sucked. In retrospect it seems pointless wether or not Egypt has any cities on the continent if I'm fighting Cavalry with Quecha elsewhere in the world. FriendoftheDork; it's interesting to see what you can do with an untenable position like that. It almost makes me want to go back and see what I can do to salvage it just for some experience.

I guess now I'm going to start my next and try and be a warmongerer to get some experience. Previously I was more of a pacifist (as if you couldn't tell) but I'd heard that declaring war more often was key in the higher difficulty levels. Hopefully practice will make perfect....

I think you've seen the error of your ways (sorry, not proselytizing!), and Joshua's tactical advice is sound and the way I also fight although I admit I sometimes fight "guerilla" wars myself with too few units.

8 attackers and 5 siege can take a city, if it is 8 Infantry and 5 Artillery vs Longbowmen and Pikes! Or maybe if the city has very few defenders. Otherwise you'll lose too many troops. I usually save about 20 City Raider macemen to upgrade to rifles, and people tell me I have too few units!

As for going back and trying some more, I'd advice against it as you're doomed to lose anyway. Even if I managed to get peace and some techs you need to play catch up and Saladin will go to Alpha Centauri long before you do that.

Myself i learned to play using the earth 18 civs map, you might want to try that as you don't have to suffer bad starting positions or be stranded on the other side of the world (unless you just have to play american civs). Easy civs are: Egypt, China, Rome. Spain or France only if you can rush very early, as in the first few rounds if you can or by going for axemen and/or chariots asap and building 6-10 of them just with 1 or two cities. In my recent Emperor game I managed to rush with 7 chariots using England, and then I had to spend alot of time researching and building 2 gallyes as well.

These early wars should be fairly quick, lasting no more than 20 turns. Sometimes destruction isn't necessary, taking a few workers early on and pillaging some might be enough to seriously weakening your neighbour. And those workers are mighty nice to have yourself

Your goal at Monarch diff. should be to reach Rennaissance before the other AIs using any means possible. Oh, I usually play marathon but that requires some patience, although it should help you train with different tech levels before the units become obsolete.

 

[John117]

Thanks guys, this has all been really helpful. I'll take bestbrian's suggestion and replay the game or a new one if I can't find it and save every 1000 years or so. I'll try and incorporate all the suggestions and then I'll post the saves with commentaries of why I decided to do certain things.

 

[Kesshi]

Kesshi; Thebes was at the bottom of the penisula and was the last city I captured so not much opportunity there.

John117,

Something clicked after I read that line:

I stretch myself pretty thin to build a city in an excellent spot to box Egypt in.

If Thebes was so far away, then why did you have to worry about Egypt's encroachment that you felt the need to "stretch yourself pretty thin" while blocking them off? It sounds like you could have naturally progressed towards the block off spot, rather than just plopping a city down there with minimal commerce coming in. Again, I'm basing my speculations off not seeing the map, so it's possible I missing something that I wouldn't with a view of the map.