Why am I loosing the edge after liberalism?

Mack_Jagger

Warlord
Joined
Jul 23, 2006
Messages
134
Location
Stockholm Sweden
Hello Mack Jagger here, still wrestling monarch difficulty. I posted a game save a couple of weeks ago and got som great advice from Gooblah, but that was for a semi isolated start. This time I seek your wisdom in why my game always seems to lose momentum after liberalism.

A short history how I got to where I am right now. I founded my capital Amsterdam on a peninsula with gold in the fat cross, city number two contained three sources of jewels and city number three claimed iron. This was a great start for a financiall leader and I lead the tech race in the early era. As soon as i got iron online I started spamming swordmen, while beelining to construction. My neighbours were Boudica and Catherine so you might understand I wanted an millitary edge. And yeah, Rameses was hemmed in to north as well.

My game plan was to teach away with military techs, clear out my continent and then tech to a space victory, since I havent got one of those in Bts.

The campaign against Boudica went along fine I took three of here citys, including her capital, before she vassalized here self to Catherine who invited Rameses in for the fun. I continued the war until I got one more city. I don't remeber which one but due to culture pressure I needed to get that fourth city as well. Rameses war effort constrained it self to send one pathetic little stack and Catherine didn't do anything at all. Obviously they were unprepard for war.

I made peace with Catherine and focused on infrastructure. I also got a back fill buddy in Justinian who was on another continent. I was one turn away from liberalism in the early 900 ADs and put the tech on hold, no one was even close to education at that time. I had it on hold untill I could grab steel from it and then upgraded all my swords and maces to grenadiers and renewed the war, thinking it was cleaning time.

One stack whent in to Gaul to grab the last few citys of Boudica and the main stack whent in to Russia to finish of Catherine. She had a big chunk of land so that would obviously take some time. The war against Gaul went fine I grabbed two citys but was forced to abandon one when Boudica showed up with an hilariously big stack of medeval junk, maces and horse archers and such. A temporary set back and I eventually pushed her of the continenet. She still had some citys scattered along on some small island, but there wasn't anything I could do at that for the moment.

And Rameses declared as well but he was a non factor in this war as in the previuos one.

I swung the gaulish invasion force north to join in on the russian front, which had advanced in an nice and controlled manner. I got some price citys for my effort and from the city of Novgorod I advanced on an ridge aginst the grand price it self, Moscow. But there an ugly sight awaited. The city was packed with curiassiers, an amount of units that trebbled that of my invasion force. Probably Catherine built the statue of Zeus because I was suffering badly from war weariness, Amstedam was down to pop 7 and I didn't have the production capacity to face all of those curiassiers. I made peace and gifted Novgorod back, since it was swamped with russian culture. Okay that didn't go quite as planned.

More infrastructure work and techtrading. I was starting to loose my momentum, Justinan was cathing up and Bismarck and Rameses passed me in score. I still wanted to clean out my continent but the next obvius step was to tech cavalary but Catherine wasn't far from cossacks so that didn't quite appeal to me. So i abided my time, teched to assembly line, upgraded all my foot soldiers to infantry, fortitfied with machine guns, got to industrialism before Catherine declared war, yeah yeah you think your tough lady? Send your scrawny ponys to face my tanks, do that ha ha ha! Oh so you got artillery as well, hmm that makes the situation less amusing. And oh you got a shitload of them, okay I stop laughing now.

Tha initial combat stood in the surroundings of the former Russian city of Yekaterinenburg. I had fortified the hill in front of city with guerilla II machineguns and infantry. I didn't have artillery and wanted to take the brunt of that menacing artillery stack of hers. I only had one tank that had reached the front but more were coming in. And tha AI stupied as it sometimes is, attacked the small outpost on the hill and wasted god knows how many units of artillery. And the waves of russian cossacks and artillery just keept coming. It wasn't a biggy because she was lossing units not me. In the game save I'm just about to go on the offence but now i realize I don't want to. I don't want to deal with the teadious work of conquering russia, to ruin my ecnomy and start a neck to neck race for the space race win, which I would most likely loose to Justinian.

This game is still winnable but that's not the point. I have been playin monarch difficulty for quite som time and don't want the struggle anymore. If this had been an emperor game it would have been different but I would like to now why I'm not able to win comfortable on moarch. What is my game lacking? Is a solid base game all you need to win comfortably on monarch or are gambits of some sorts needed to achive that? My diplomacy could have been better in this game, my only good friend is Justinian, Bismarck is my buddy as well but I don't want to trade to much with him since he is the leader of the world and all.

If some of you could find the timeof taking a look on the game save and come with som constructive critisism I would be very thankfull.

Hm i don't really understand how to manage thum nails. But in any case the first picture shiws the front at Yekaterinenburg and the second the science city of Bibracte. And why am I posting thoose? For no particular reason but to tempt you to open the game save,:mischief:
 

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If you want full-blown images, you'll need to use an external pic-managing source, like Photobucket. Anyways, sounds like you're doing good. I'll give you my preliminary analysis, and come back after I open the save, since I can't at the moment...

Try utilizing your coastline; If you can wipe out BOudica OR capture here cities and make 'em into a Colony, you'll have a steady war ally. On the flip side, the colony may be adverse to you "declaring war without their knowledge" or something to that effect (I've never seen it, but I don't use colonies that much). Also, taking out Boudica may force Catherine to ask for peace, giving you time to reestablish a tech lead, or at least begin converting to production for a Space Race. Keep an armada at hand to devastate your rivals for a Space Race. I'll check back a tad later, though.
 
Sounds like a good start, liberalism available in 900ad is better than I can manage. It then seems like you took a very long time to get anywhere. Why did you need to own the continent before going for space?

Do you have any earlier saves of this game, maybe around 1000ad?
 
Gooblah, the thing is, in this game at this point Boudica is harmless and I don't want peace with Catherine because I'm stronger than her and I'm out to get her citys. The thing is, with that start I got I think I would be able to have a bigger tech lead over her and the other AIs. If looking at write ups of games by many of the good players in here, hey are able to pull away from the AI in the late game, for me it's always the opposite. Just look at Sisituls last ALC with Ragnar, and that was on Emperor! And don't have the skills of most of those players but obviously I'm doing some serious strategic misstakes or wrong thinking in the late game, but I don't know what.

Pigswill, before this game Ihad a bunch of semi isolated starts with a hefty amount of good land to settle for my self. I always went for the space race but lost out. That led me to the conclusion that I needed more land to generate the science, something lika a continent or so.:mischief: .

I'll post a save from around 1000 AD shortly. Right now my wife is giving me a mean look, wanting me to socialize a little bit.

Thanks guys for chipping in your thoughts.
 
how is the powerate and diplomatic relations with ramses. He seams as a bigger threat than Catherin. he have more land and all. catherin is jamed in a corner so i dont think you need more land from here. maybe criple ramses a bit and then aim for space. Try to get an engenerer and merchant so you can get mining inc and sids or creal inc. that will probably give you the edge in the space race. Do you have Oxford and wall street? those help alot if placed at the right spots. I'm a monarch player myself but barley finnish my games. I come to a point where I belive I will win and start to play anouther leader.
 
Dragomaster: Rameses isn't a threat millitary, yet but Catherine has been a pain in the ass since the startof this game. I had built up for this last war and was about to declare on her within ten turns or so, she was pleased at the moment and then she declared. She want's me of that continent just as much as I want her of it. No way she will let me tech away in peace, and taken in acount the hoards of unit she spams, shes got to go.

And once again, I'm not realy seeking advice how to win this particular game, I'm sure I would manage somehow. The thing is, I want to dominant monarch the way I dominated Prince before moving up to monarch. But even with a great start, hitting liberalism by 900 AD tha AIs is cathing up. I'm not the only one in the world with tanks even though I persued to get to industrialism way before any one else. Why is that happening? Following Sisituls, Aelfs and Obsoletes threads, that doesn't happen to them? Okay Obsolete doesn't really count because of his unusall playing style, but, well I guess you get my point. The reason I'm posting this particular game is because I think I played it out quite well, but still isn't domnating in the later era. In hindsight I think I should have dine more with the big techlead I had, picking steel from Liberalism. If there ever was an oportunity to clear out the continent, that was it. But I really don't now how I would have done it. I had my supermedic chariot from a GG for fast healing and accuracy promoted cannons and all. But the war weariness was mounting so quickly my citys were losing so much population I couldn't keep my production up. I bet Catherine has that lousy Statue of Zeus hidden somewhere in one of her citys.

Very well, as requested here's a save from 950 AD. One turn left on liberalism, researching engineering at the moment.
 

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Checking the Original Post's save. Will edit the post later with tips!

Also, thanks for the nice comments regarding my feedback! It made my day!:D
 
Had a look at the 950 save. Why the heck are you fighting with Bod over territory when you have an apparently large and generally unexplored landmass to your south east that could potentially give you several cities without any hassle at all?
 
Had a look at the 950 save. Why the heck are you fighting with Bod over territory when you have an apparently large and generally unexplored landmass to your south east that could potentially give you several cities without any hassle at all?

Yes I forgot to tell. This is a big'n small map. I have never played that kind of a map before but from the name I understod it was big continents with scattered small island. If you look closely at that ladmass you can see water in the south. Of course that could be a lake but at that moment in the game I thought it to be a better option to capture tha citys on my mainland ang get rid of the Boudican threat, that gal can be quite nasty. I eventually settled that land you're talking about and it was indeed a strip of land (not that I could be sure of that in 950 AD). It had place for two citys and I had to share it with Catherine. She got the best spot, hmmm.
 
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