Report is done, but I plan to add pics to make it a bit less boring to read.
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Intro:
This is my first RB epic, and therefore first report, so I might not exactly be up to the group's high standards, but that will at least give me room for improvement. Finally, I should mention that I STARTED this game only 2 days before closing time, and so the time I devoted to taking notes and capturing screens was virtually nil. I have enough notes to make a decent short report for the early-mid game, and remember a bit about the end, but pics will be severely lacking or nonexistent until I load up some saves and capture some status pics, and there will be no 'action' pics at all.
I've been playing Civ since about February and until about a month and a half ago was a rather poor player. Finally my lurking on CivFanantics forum began to pay off, and I won my first monarch game about a month ago using Cathy. I now feel I can win most games played on Monarch IF I'm able to play with a financial leader, I and have even won my only attempt at an Emperor game (Praetorian rush with Julius). When I downloaded the savefile for this game however my heart sank when I saw RBEpic_8Egypt as the title. I was faced with making a win with Spiritual and Creative and no midgame unique unit. I did not expect much success. I had NEVER played a game with a spiritual civ, and while Cathy is also creative, I knew it's a trait best suited for the early game, and would have preferred a trait like Financial or Aggressive that would carry me through for the rest.
Faced with this scary prospect, I did what anyone with far too much time on my hands would do - I began playing lots of test games. I created games matching Sirian's settings long before I ever opened the save file, using the same Civs and map settings, so only the map itself would be different in the real Epic 8. I ended up playing 4 test games, one accidentally on Normal speed instead of Epic, and learned (or was reminded of) the following things:
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Conclusions from my test games:
-Monarch AIs expand fast, and if you're unlucky it's easy to get left with very few initial cites before the land is full (partially a product of a slightly over-populated map), and Creative can help make sure cities placed close to the AI end up controlling a decent amount of tiles.
-Spiritual can be a wonderful trait when a tech allows a civic that can help a bit, but is not worth the cost of anarchy. I learned I could leverage small advantages by jumping into slavery, hereditary rule, free market, etc the turn they became available without having to effect my builds. I did NOT tend to make full use of the tech because I never really messed with the religious civics, nor did I swap into XP generating civics when preparing for war - the civics themselves seemed to offer too many trade-offs, and the Monarch AIs really don't put up THAT much of a fight when you make the war on your own terms.
-Taking a religion is unnecessary - it's impossible to make everyone like you if you take one, and you don't need allies that much on this level (or you don't need to share a religion to make an ally). This allowed me to ignore the early religious techs except when I could try to grab the Oracle, but it also denied me the opportunity to run Organized religion or Theocracy for their bonuses.
-Mansa Musa and Roosevelt are VERY easy to make Friendly, even without a religion, and signing defensive packs with them tends to make you safe in the late game. Unfortunately they also tend to be big tech rivals, so without pressure on Mansa, he may out-tech you into space.
-Defensive pacts can provide a false sense of security if the AIs in the pact declare war on a third party. Suddenly you can be left without allies and looking very vulnerable to a Civ with a larger army in the late-game.
-Barbs can be tough on Monarch, so it's important to make use of the War Chariot to keep them at bay, since the unit isn't very good against the other Civs.
-Industrious trait is NOT necessary even at this level to get wonders. I managed to get the Pyramids in three out of four test games, got the Oracle twice, and got the wonders I really like (Hanging Gardens, Statue of Liberty, and Space Elevator) in every game, as well more than a third of the others and most of the modern era happiness wonders.
-Workers are your friends - you can never have too many.
-It's easy to make it to Liberalism. I waited until I was about five techs from it, choose Liberalism in the tech advisor, and won it in every test game with no AI close.
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The results of my four test games were as follows:
-Space win by a few turns (I believe in the late 1900s) over Mansa after taking out two Civs
-Diplo win (on Normal speed) in the late 1800s with close allies Mansa and Lizzy voting for me, after I took out three Civs
-Space LOSS to Mansa in the late 1900s by maybe ten turns, fighting a late war against a speak attacking Mao, and having only taken out one Civ.
-Space win in 1910 over Mansa (who had all the casings and thrusters built) after taking out two Civs.
Therefore I developed several key goals for my actual game on the downloaded map that I planned to try if the map allowed (I was worried the difficulty would be harder because Sirian choose a map that was tougher on the player - I need not had worried.)
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Goals for the Epic:
-Continue to take out Civs and absorb their empires - staying small means being out-teched by financial civs
-Don't take a religion
-Keep a strong military by building at least one round of each defensive unit in every city to keep my power graph level about the lowest AIs
-Put pressure on Mansa if possible.
-Watch out for barbs
-Build more workers than normal - one for each city.
My game succeeded beyond all of my hopes, partly because I'm still improving each game and party because I felt we were given a very easy map that also gave me a bit of luck. Most of all however, by taking out Mansa early I knocked out the main tech rival in my test games, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.
(Note: This game would have probably been VERY different for me with aggressive AI civs instead of fairly peaceful ones (or the very backward Toko), I don't know why Sirian didn't throw in Genghis, Monty, or Alex, but if he had I may have had one less tech rival, but I also would have had a harder time knocking out whoever my neighbors happened to be)
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Game report:
I founded on the starting location, after being very tempted to move to a safer hill tile (I still expected lots of Barbs and a tough map). I couldn't resist keeping the default start tile however, since I know the game tends to make those spots have a better chance of popping resources later in the game.
I liked starting with two warriors, since I could scout more and continue scouting after I moved one back to the capital for barb defense. I had GREAT luck with the scouting warriors, popping fishing AND BRONZE WORKING (!) before one of the warriors was killed by an AI animal. The bronze tech pop wasn't as useful as it seems however, since I only had about 8 turns left on the research counter before I researched it on my own, but it was still quite nice.
I followed my default research path - Mining, Bronze, worker tech to hook up resource in capital's radius (it was AH in this game), Iron Working. I like knowing which locations will have metal before I found my third city.
Similarly, I have a default build order (at least on Monarch) - worker, worker chops worker, second worker hooks up resource, first worker chops settler. After that I built a war chariot while growing to two, and then a second settler.
I found Memphis due north of the capital, securing four resources, but taking only a mediocre location otherwise. I continued to think this was a hard map at this point, since the spots near resources seemed to lacs grasslands and flood planes, while the high-food tile locations seemed to lack resources.
Heliopolis is founded south of the capital near flood plains, and will be suburb commerce city, but weak early on due to a lack of resource tiles. I had two spots grabbed out from under me (Saladin founded Medina to my East on the tile I wanted, and Mao founded a city to the west AFTER I had left my worker asleep for three turns while I moved a warrior in position to block possible barbs and forgot to awaken the settler - Mao beet me by two turns. Still, I'm glad I lost both spots, since I ended up with the best location (and don't really know how I missed it).
The game was rapidly approaching the 1000BC cutoff after which I would be allowed to declare war on an AI. I actually had enough available land to settle a marginal fourth city without a war, but I begin looking around just to check on possible targets and noticed that Saladin was VERY weak for this stage of the game â in 1000BC he would have two cities and lack archers in his second (as well as the third he founded a few turns before I declared). I on the other hand had no real military (barbs would have been a threat if there had been any), as well as no Iron. I planned on launching a war City Raider Axes, but then realized just how much faster I could churn out the cheap war chariots. As I recall I began the war with 12 chariots and 3 axes built, although only 8 chariots were in position to take Medina and Damascus in the first turn of the war.
Mecca ends up having 4 archers, and I make the stupid move of attacking with damaged chariots and loose my troops and let one archer live. Fortune favors the bold however, so when my reserve force of 4 archers arrives I attack Saladin's new garrison of three archers, and win two battles at less than 50% odds and take the city. As Sirian has forced me to read about 500 times, Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good ™.
I now have a small empire of six cites, all in pretty good locations. Most of the AI have five cites at this point, I believe Mansa and maybe Mao had six. I planned on continuing my attacks on neighboring AIs, but first needed to do some consolidating of my little empire. Since I lack detailed logs of the order I preformed actions, and don't have any screenshots, I'll just provide my actions leading up to the next war in boring list/topic form.
Diplomacy â I planned on being friends with Roosevelt and Caesar in this game, due to them sharing the smallest amount of my border, so I gave each of them techs when asked (Iron working as well, drat). I also gave it to Mansa, since I didn't want another war so soon with a Civ that ranked high on the power graph. Lizzy asked as well, but I told her to take a hike â I knew with our close borders she would be harder to keep as a close friend. Long-term I probably could have remained close friends with Caesar and Roosevelt, since I never declared on them, but honestly, I found myself needing little than any potential ally could offer. Plus Roosevelt and Caesar ended up hating each other, so I was getting negatives for âworst enemyâ trading. They ended up cautious, but my military prevented them from ever declaring on me. I realize I could have made them closer through religion, but that also might have meant more wars at a pace I did not controll, and I would gladly fight wars alone on my own terms than be forced to back Caesar or Roosevelt into a war with their religious enemies in order to maintain the relations I had carefully cultivated. This would have gone differently had I not been the strongest Civ, but in this game I quite obviously was.
Research path - Pottery for Cottages, Writing for Libraries, Math for Hanging Gardens, Alphabet for tech trading, Calendar for luxury resources, Metal Casting for forges. Most boring thing anyone has ever written â Check.
Wonders â Wonders went VERY late in this game. I didn't prioritize Stonehenge at all, and my rush to build war chariots meant I began building Pyramids very late, and without Stone I thought it very unlikely I would get it. Stonehenge was still available in 300BC, I made no effort to grab it however. The Pyramids were FIDL in 300BC netting me 300 gold or so (I had about 25 turns left, so I wasn't close). I made no effort to grab Oracle or Parthenon (they were gone before I researched their techs). I did make an effort to grab two wonders fairly early on however, so Memphis started Aqueduct-Hanging Gardens as soon as Mathematics was researched and Mecca built Lighthouse-Great Lighthouse as soon as possible as well.
Build path â My research break-even rate had fallen to 30% after my little war and captured cities, so I needed a period of considerable infrastructure buildup. In rapid succession I churned out a worker for each city, assigning one to work its own city (well assigning in my head, I obviously don't automate city improvements). I managed to research Calender at 100%, and then had exhausted all my cash reserves. I used binary research on Metal Casting, but nothing else, since I don't really enjoy the additional micromanaging despite the minor benefits. After the workers my build path was granery-barracks-walls-axeman-sword (I gained iron from Saladin's territory)-library-forge.
After this first war my research would never fall below 60% for any length of time despite a considerable amount of waring. I suppose this means I could have been even more aggressive, but at the same time I feel I struck a good balance of being aggressive while still teching fast enough to not worry about falling behind Civs I was not currently fighting.
I suppose I will also mention at this point that while preparing for my next war I also came to the realization that I had seen no barb troops this game. Now I had seen two barb city boundaries, so I knew they were there, but they must have been sending troops elsewhere. I saw ZERO barbs in this game until the 1700s, when a barb city up in the ice sent a few longbows towards me that were killed by a Cav â not exactly the scary barb threat I predicted.
As I just mentioned I was building Axes and then Swords. The former were city defenders (I never build archers in my game), the later were the beginning of my next attack phase. I had decided I would eventually attack both Lizzy and Mansa, hoping to knock out the former and just push back the latter â I was quite hemmed in on my East, and they had several nice cities. I planned to follow the same capturing process I would for the entire game after Saladin had been eliminated â only taking about 40% of the AIs cities, burning the rest. This meant that even when I finished the game I only had 19 cities, but it also meant every city had a full cross to work and I didn't have to pay maintanance on junk cities. Creative really helped here, since I didn't need placeholder cities to secure borders, as did a total of five great artists, all used to culture bomb captured cities to fill in territory with my cultural borders.
I raise an army of about 15 words to attack Lizzy's southern cities. I plan to take a few and then see if I can knock her out. I make a note that I will NOT be able to immediately carry the war to Mansa even if I make a quick peace with Lizzy since the next war will need Cats. The turns right before the war go like this â I'm researching Drama-Music for the GA (I will get it). I could have used Music for a lot of tech trades, but I made FAR fewer than in my test games. Honestly, as long as I was ahead in commerce, I could see little reason to give the AI something good for something that would take me 4-6 turns to research (as I said before this would have been different if I wanted close allies). I am still sucking up to Caesar, Roosevelt, and like an idiot â Mao. I actually gave him a tech even though we shared a border and I knew I would eventually attack him. The foolish diplomacy with Mao is probably what pushed me towards playing this game without really trying to make anyone like me, so long as I didn't make Caesar or Roosevelt annoyed. Anyways, when my research was back up to 50% I felt ready to attack, and did declare on Lizzy in 440AD. Right before I attacked I did something I have never tried before however and something that I'm a bit ashamed of â I demanded Construction the turn before I declared, not expecting anything, but she actually gave it to me. Cats began being built in most cities at this point, something that didn't bode well for Mansa.
I knock out two of Lizzy's junk cites that had been pushed back by my culture in the first turns of the war. I then take York, which is fairly well defended, and prepare to attack London. At this point I plan to take London and burn one medium sized city with overlap (Nottingham) south of London. However before this can happen Mansa declares on my in 605AD. I'm faced with a major dilemma, since Mansa is threatening Memphis with one sword, and may have more coming, and Lizzy will agree to an immediate peace, which will allow my attack force to become my defense force. I gamble that Mansa is offering a phony war and therefore I can safely take London and burn Nottingham, while only whipping one elephant in Memphis (one of my very few whips, since neither happiness or health were ever much of a problem in this game â very east compared to my tests again).
In 750AD I have taken London and Lizzy has researched Feudalism and began building and upgrading Longbows. She has also moved a settler pair down to rebuild a junk city, but when my axeman threatens she moves away, sparing me burning it again. On the other hand I was an idiot outside York, watching Mansa's horse archer walk up to the city defended only by an axeman and then attack successfully and take the city. Thankfully he doesn't burn it, and I retake it next turn using the sword I had STANDING OUTSIDE THE CITY.
In 760AD I have burned Nottingham and made peace with Lizzy since I couldn't locate her last city (it ended up being located on the ice above Mansa). Lizzy offered me Mysticism and Horseback riding to sweeten the deal. Mansa does little to threaten my empire, so I take my time and heal troops before burning Mansa's first junk city in the north. Mansa then founds another junk city on site of an old English junk city, which I burn with leftover war chariots upgraded to horse archers. I then prepare to take very defended Djenne using suicide cats. After taking Djenne Mansa will accept peace while giving me Polytheism and Meditation (which I still hadn't researched).
I spend the following turns building up the captured cities and shooting for some wonders â I build Great Library and Angkor Wat, loose Chitzen Itza, rush Notre Dame with a GE, and notice I have captured the Pyramids, Parthenon, and Sistine Chapel in London. I realize Lizzy had built Sistine the turn before I took the city, so thanks Lizzy. I revolt to Hereditary Rule and will remain there until I swap to Universal Suffrage in 500 or so years.
I then prepare to go to war with Mansa on my own terms, and eliminate him this time. I build up two identical armies of six cats and twelve maces (using upgraded leftover swords from the last war that had city raider two and three promotions for about half my armies). I plan to take two or three of Mansa's cities, burn the rest, knock out Lizzy if I can find her, and then keep the army rolling to attack Tokugawa or Mao if maintenance is under control. The war goes very well â Mansa has tons of defenders in his capital and two cities in the East (western cites have only two defenders each), but I use suicide cats and loose very few Maces. I take his capital and finish him off, having captured three of his cites total (Timbuktu, Tekedda, and having captured Djenne in the last war). I immediately declare on Lizzy and take out her two TOTAL iceball cites in the north, she's eliminated in 1490.
After this my notes get even more spotty â I basically knew I had things won â I had double the score of second place Roosevelt. I considerer going for a space victory, but after seeing how I already had over 40% of the area, I decide to go for my first higher-than-Noble domination win.
Basically before the next war I will shoot to Liberalism, win it, take Nationalism, build the Taj, take whatever tech it is that provides a free GM, and use the $$$ from the trade mission to fund deficit research for many turns to come at 90%.
I used my leftover forced from the campaign against Mansa to start a little war against Tokugawa in 1592AD. The situation is that I plan to attack Mao with Cavs, and am finishing researching Gunpowder in 1592. I will build Cavs and then attack Mao, take what cities I want, and then move on to Toku, but first I need to take out two of Toku's cities he has managed to build to Mao's East in order to not fight a two front war or loose territory to those cities' culture. I plan to get good use out of my remaining maces and cats, so I make two stacks (about 5 cats and 8 maces each) to take Toku's cities, planning to quickly take them, make peace, and declare on Mao. Mao however had other ideas â he declares on my one turn AFTER I declare on Toku. I have to use my offensive stacks as defenders to knock out Mao's stacks that are about to enter my territory, and basically we end up destroying each other's ability to field an army. I however have just finished researching Military Tradition and begin building Cavs in every city. A trickle of Cavs (and maces upgraded to rifles) quickly becomes a torrent however, and the writing is on the wall for Mao and Toku.
I accept peace with Toku as soon as I can (but AFTER I take and burn those two Eastern cities) in order to focus on Mao. My cats and cavs converge on his southern cities, and they begin falling like flies. He will research chemistry before I knock him out, but one grenadier and 3-4 longbows per city simply cannot match an army of combat four cavs and city raider three rifles with cats upgraded to cannon that can take out 60% cultural defenses in one turn.
In 1712AD I have taken Mao down to 2 cities â a junk city on an island to the south and a city surrounded by Caesar's culture to the far north. I have 52% of the land area, and am considering having to push for back door domination through the UN if knocking out Toku won't push me above 62% land area.
I declare peace with Mao and immediately declare on Toku. He is hopelessly backwards, and I'm able to field three different armies and run wild around his Civ. After all, there isn't any military rule about dividing an army in the face of INFERIOR forces. I culture bomb my last artist and bring my land total to 58% with Toku still having one city on an island, and me having one of his former cities still in revolt. I had been building Galleons in preparation of having to take the island (this is the moment I'm most proud of â I never would have had the foresight to do this a month ago). I do manage to take the island city in 1802, but in 1804 I get a border pop and reach 62.5% in 1804 and trigger domination victory in 1806.
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Conclusion:
I was obviously going to win this game by any victory type I wanted â I had over four times the production and GDP of Roosevelt, so it wasn't touch and go by any means, but I don't think I could have finished any faster with my current mediocre abilities as a player with any other victory type. I DO think I could have reached domination earlier however, if I had built less infrastructure and more units and therefore been willing to accept greater losses in exchange for faster progress. As I said however, I kept expecting this game to be harder than it was, so I played conservative throughout. The game could easily had gone differently had the AIs I attacked early had cities placed on more hills or if my territory had fewer happiness or health resources. Being able to knock out Saladin so easily and never having to worry about happiness or health made this game the easiest Monarch game I've played yet, even taking into account my rising (though still modest) abilities. This is easily attested to by the fact that I managed to achieve domination victory without allies where in my test game I was barely winning (or even loosing) the space race.
In summary I would say I managed to respond to my goals in the following ways:
-Continue to take out Civs and absorb their empires - staying small means being out-teched by financial civs
I did great on this point, taking out so many civs early was the way to go IMHO.
-Don't take a religion
Check â I saw no reason to in this game
-Keep a strong military by building at least one round of each defensive unit in every city to keep my power graph level about the lowest Ais
I never lagged in power, but unlike other games it wasn't because I had a lot of defenders, but rather because I had a large offensive strike force. Being ahead in tech meant that I could afford to lower research down to zero at one point during the game in order to upgrade all my defenders from longbows to rifles however.
-Put pressure on Mansa if possible.
Taking him out was the biggest change from my test games â the player had an advantage here because he started close and in a lousy location in terms of available high-food tiles as long as they attacked him fairly quickly.
-Watch out for barbs
Non-issue, as there were almost no barbs.
-Build more workers than normal - one for each city.
19 cities, 24 workers â Check.
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Short Version:
Short version is I played an aggressive game with no allies, after a strong start crushing Saladin, Lizzy, Mansa in turn, then building up for a final push on Mao and then Tokugawa to hit the domination threshold in 1806. Back-door domination was about 40 or so turns away IIRC, and rocketry about the same number of turns, so Domination was the quickest victory type I think I could have managed.
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Big Finish:
I really enjoyed this game, thanks to Sirian for seting it up, and thanks to the RB community for making this such an inviting place to play. This was my first RB game, but it won't be the last. The best thing I can say about this game is that preparing for it made me a much better Civ player, and making people enjoy the game more is exactly what these sort of sites should be all about.
Thanks for the ride.
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Intro:
This is my first RB epic, and therefore first report, so I might not exactly be up to the group's high standards, but that will at least give me room for improvement. Finally, I should mention that I STARTED this game only 2 days before closing time, and so the time I devoted to taking notes and capturing screens was virtually nil. I have enough notes to make a decent short report for the early-mid game, and remember a bit about the end, but pics will be severely lacking or nonexistent until I load up some saves and capture some status pics, and there will be no 'action' pics at all.
I've been playing Civ since about February and until about a month and a half ago was a rather poor player. Finally my lurking on CivFanantics forum began to pay off, and I won my first monarch game about a month ago using Cathy. I now feel I can win most games played on Monarch IF I'm able to play with a financial leader, I and have even won my only attempt at an Emperor game (Praetorian rush with Julius). When I downloaded the savefile for this game however my heart sank when I saw RBEpic_8Egypt as the title. I was faced with making a win with Spiritual and Creative and no midgame unique unit. I did not expect much success. I had NEVER played a game with a spiritual civ, and while Cathy is also creative, I knew it's a trait best suited for the early game, and would have preferred a trait like Financial or Aggressive that would carry me through for the rest.
Faced with this scary prospect, I did what anyone with far too much time on my hands would do - I began playing lots of test games. I created games matching Sirian's settings long before I ever opened the save file, using the same Civs and map settings, so only the map itself would be different in the real Epic 8. I ended up playing 4 test games, one accidentally on Normal speed instead of Epic, and learned (or was reminded of) the following things:
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Conclusions from my test games:
-Monarch AIs expand fast, and if you're unlucky it's easy to get left with very few initial cites before the land is full (partially a product of a slightly over-populated map), and Creative can help make sure cities placed close to the AI end up controlling a decent amount of tiles.
-Spiritual can be a wonderful trait when a tech allows a civic that can help a bit, but is not worth the cost of anarchy. I learned I could leverage small advantages by jumping into slavery, hereditary rule, free market, etc the turn they became available without having to effect my builds. I did NOT tend to make full use of the tech because I never really messed with the religious civics, nor did I swap into XP generating civics when preparing for war - the civics themselves seemed to offer too many trade-offs, and the Monarch AIs really don't put up THAT much of a fight when you make the war on your own terms.
-Taking a religion is unnecessary - it's impossible to make everyone like you if you take one, and you don't need allies that much on this level (or you don't need to share a religion to make an ally). This allowed me to ignore the early religious techs except when I could try to grab the Oracle, but it also denied me the opportunity to run Organized religion or Theocracy for their bonuses.
-Mansa Musa and Roosevelt are VERY easy to make Friendly, even without a religion, and signing defensive packs with them tends to make you safe in the late game. Unfortunately they also tend to be big tech rivals, so without pressure on Mansa, he may out-tech you into space.
-Defensive pacts can provide a false sense of security if the AIs in the pact declare war on a third party. Suddenly you can be left without allies and looking very vulnerable to a Civ with a larger army in the late-game.
-Barbs can be tough on Monarch, so it's important to make use of the War Chariot to keep them at bay, since the unit isn't very good against the other Civs.
-Industrious trait is NOT necessary even at this level to get wonders. I managed to get the Pyramids in three out of four test games, got the Oracle twice, and got the wonders I really like (Hanging Gardens, Statue of Liberty, and Space Elevator) in every game, as well more than a third of the others and most of the modern era happiness wonders.
-Workers are your friends - you can never have too many.
-It's easy to make it to Liberalism. I waited until I was about five techs from it, choose Liberalism in the tech advisor, and won it in every test game with no AI close.
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The results of my four test games were as follows:
-Space win by a few turns (I believe in the late 1900s) over Mansa after taking out two Civs
-Diplo win (on Normal speed) in the late 1800s with close allies Mansa and Lizzy voting for me, after I took out three Civs
-Space LOSS to Mansa in the late 1900s by maybe ten turns, fighting a late war against a speak attacking Mao, and having only taken out one Civ.
-Space win in 1910 over Mansa (who had all the casings and thrusters built) after taking out two Civs.
Therefore I developed several key goals for my actual game on the downloaded map that I planned to try if the map allowed (I was worried the difficulty would be harder because Sirian choose a map that was tougher on the player - I need not had worried.)
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Goals for the Epic:
-Continue to take out Civs and absorb their empires - staying small means being out-teched by financial civs
-Don't take a religion
-Keep a strong military by building at least one round of each defensive unit in every city to keep my power graph level about the lowest AIs
-Put pressure on Mansa if possible.
-Watch out for barbs
-Build more workers than normal - one for each city.
My game succeeded beyond all of my hopes, partly because I'm still improving each game and party because I felt we were given a very easy map that also gave me a bit of luck. Most of all however, by taking out Mansa early I knocked out the main tech rival in my test games, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.
(Note: This game would have probably been VERY different for me with aggressive AI civs instead of fairly peaceful ones (or the very backward Toko), I don't know why Sirian didn't throw in Genghis, Monty, or Alex, but if he had I may have had one less tech rival, but I also would have had a harder time knocking out whoever my neighbors happened to be)
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Game report:
I founded on the starting location, after being very tempted to move to a safer hill tile (I still expected lots of Barbs and a tough map). I couldn't resist keeping the default start tile however, since I know the game tends to make those spots have a better chance of popping resources later in the game.
I liked starting with two warriors, since I could scout more and continue scouting after I moved one back to the capital for barb defense. I had GREAT luck with the scouting warriors, popping fishing AND BRONZE WORKING (!) before one of the warriors was killed by an AI animal. The bronze tech pop wasn't as useful as it seems however, since I only had about 8 turns left on the research counter before I researched it on my own, but it was still quite nice.
I followed my default research path - Mining, Bronze, worker tech to hook up resource in capital's radius (it was AH in this game), Iron Working. I like knowing which locations will have metal before I found my third city.
Similarly, I have a default build order (at least on Monarch) - worker, worker chops worker, second worker hooks up resource, first worker chops settler. After that I built a war chariot while growing to two, and then a second settler.
I found Memphis due north of the capital, securing four resources, but taking only a mediocre location otherwise. I continued to think this was a hard map at this point, since the spots near resources seemed to lacs grasslands and flood planes, while the high-food tile locations seemed to lack resources.
Heliopolis is founded south of the capital near flood plains, and will be suburb commerce city, but weak early on due to a lack of resource tiles. I had two spots grabbed out from under me (Saladin founded Medina to my East on the tile I wanted, and Mao founded a city to the west AFTER I had left my worker asleep for three turns while I moved a warrior in position to block possible barbs and forgot to awaken the settler - Mao beet me by two turns. Still, I'm glad I lost both spots, since I ended up with the best location (and don't really know how I missed it).
The game was rapidly approaching the 1000BC cutoff after which I would be allowed to declare war on an AI. I actually had enough available land to settle a marginal fourth city without a war, but I begin looking around just to check on possible targets and noticed that Saladin was VERY weak for this stage of the game â in 1000BC he would have two cities and lack archers in his second (as well as the third he founded a few turns before I declared). I on the other hand had no real military (barbs would have been a threat if there had been any), as well as no Iron. I planned on launching a war City Raider Axes, but then realized just how much faster I could churn out the cheap war chariots. As I recall I began the war with 12 chariots and 3 axes built, although only 8 chariots were in position to take Medina and Damascus in the first turn of the war.
Mecca ends up having 4 archers, and I make the stupid move of attacking with damaged chariots and loose my troops and let one archer live. Fortune favors the bold however, so when my reserve force of 4 archers arrives I attack Saladin's new garrison of three archers, and win two battles at less than 50% odds and take the city. As Sirian has forced me to read about 500 times, Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good ™.
I now have a small empire of six cites, all in pretty good locations. Most of the AI have five cites at this point, I believe Mansa and maybe Mao had six. I planned on continuing my attacks on neighboring AIs, but first needed to do some consolidating of my little empire. Since I lack detailed logs of the order I preformed actions, and don't have any screenshots, I'll just provide my actions leading up to the next war in boring list/topic form.
Diplomacy â I planned on being friends with Roosevelt and Caesar in this game, due to them sharing the smallest amount of my border, so I gave each of them techs when asked (Iron working as well, drat). I also gave it to Mansa, since I didn't want another war so soon with a Civ that ranked high on the power graph. Lizzy asked as well, but I told her to take a hike â I knew with our close borders she would be harder to keep as a close friend. Long-term I probably could have remained close friends with Caesar and Roosevelt, since I never declared on them, but honestly, I found myself needing little than any potential ally could offer. Plus Roosevelt and Caesar ended up hating each other, so I was getting negatives for âworst enemyâ trading. They ended up cautious, but my military prevented them from ever declaring on me. I realize I could have made them closer through religion, but that also might have meant more wars at a pace I did not controll, and I would gladly fight wars alone on my own terms than be forced to back Caesar or Roosevelt into a war with their religious enemies in order to maintain the relations I had carefully cultivated. This would have gone differently had I not been the strongest Civ, but in this game I quite obviously was.
Research path - Pottery for Cottages, Writing for Libraries, Math for Hanging Gardens, Alphabet for tech trading, Calendar for luxury resources, Metal Casting for forges. Most boring thing anyone has ever written â Check.
Wonders â Wonders went VERY late in this game. I didn't prioritize Stonehenge at all, and my rush to build war chariots meant I began building Pyramids very late, and without Stone I thought it very unlikely I would get it. Stonehenge was still available in 300BC, I made no effort to grab it however. The Pyramids were FIDL in 300BC netting me 300 gold or so (I had about 25 turns left, so I wasn't close). I made no effort to grab Oracle or Parthenon (they were gone before I researched their techs). I did make an effort to grab two wonders fairly early on however, so Memphis started Aqueduct-Hanging Gardens as soon as Mathematics was researched and Mecca built Lighthouse-Great Lighthouse as soon as possible as well.
Build path â My research break-even rate had fallen to 30% after my little war and captured cities, so I needed a period of considerable infrastructure buildup. In rapid succession I churned out a worker for each city, assigning one to work its own city (well assigning in my head, I obviously don't automate city improvements). I managed to research Calender at 100%, and then had exhausted all my cash reserves. I used binary research on Metal Casting, but nothing else, since I don't really enjoy the additional micromanaging despite the minor benefits. After the workers my build path was granery-barracks-walls-axeman-sword (I gained iron from Saladin's territory)-library-forge.
After this first war my research would never fall below 60% for any length of time despite a considerable amount of waring. I suppose this means I could have been even more aggressive, but at the same time I feel I struck a good balance of being aggressive while still teching fast enough to not worry about falling behind Civs I was not currently fighting.
I suppose I will also mention at this point that while preparing for my next war I also came to the realization that I had seen no barb troops this game. Now I had seen two barb city boundaries, so I knew they were there, but they must have been sending troops elsewhere. I saw ZERO barbs in this game until the 1700s, when a barb city up in the ice sent a few longbows towards me that were killed by a Cav â not exactly the scary barb threat I predicted.
As I just mentioned I was building Axes and then Swords. The former were city defenders (I never build archers in my game), the later were the beginning of my next attack phase. I had decided I would eventually attack both Lizzy and Mansa, hoping to knock out the former and just push back the latter â I was quite hemmed in on my East, and they had several nice cities. I planned to follow the same capturing process I would for the entire game after Saladin had been eliminated â only taking about 40% of the AIs cities, burning the rest. This meant that even when I finished the game I only had 19 cities, but it also meant every city had a full cross to work and I didn't have to pay maintanance on junk cities. Creative really helped here, since I didn't need placeholder cities to secure borders, as did a total of five great artists, all used to culture bomb captured cities to fill in territory with my cultural borders.
I raise an army of about 15 words to attack Lizzy's southern cities. I plan to take a few and then see if I can knock her out. I make a note that I will NOT be able to immediately carry the war to Mansa even if I make a quick peace with Lizzy since the next war will need Cats. The turns right before the war go like this â I'm researching Drama-Music for the GA (I will get it). I could have used Music for a lot of tech trades, but I made FAR fewer than in my test games. Honestly, as long as I was ahead in commerce, I could see little reason to give the AI something good for something that would take me 4-6 turns to research (as I said before this would have been different if I wanted close allies). I am still sucking up to Caesar, Roosevelt, and like an idiot â Mao. I actually gave him a tech even though we shared a border and I knew I would eventually attack him. The foolish diplomacy with Mao is probably what pushed me towards playing this game without really trying to make anyone like me, so long as I didn't make Caesar or Roosevelt annoyed. Anyways, when my research was back up to 50% I felt ready to attack, and did declare on Lizzy in 440AD. Right before I attacked I did something I have never tried before however and something that I'm a bit ashamed of â I demanded Construction the turn before I declared, not expecting anything, but she actually gave it to me. Cats began being built in most cities at this point, something that didn't bode well for Mansa.
I knock out two of Lizzy's junk cites that had been pushed back by my culture in the first turns of the war. I then take York, which is fairly well defended, and prepare to attack London. At this point I plan to take London and burn one medium sized city with overlap (Nottingham) south of London. However before this can happen Mansa declares on my in 605AD. I'm faced with a major dilemma, since Mansa is threatening Memphis with one sword, and may have more coming, and Lizzy will agree to an immediate peace, which will allow my attack force to become my defense force. I gamble that Mansa is offering a phony war and therefore I can safely take London and burn Nottingham, while only whipping one elephant in Memphis (one of my very few whips, since neither happiness or health were ever much of a problem in this game â very east compared to my tests again).
In 750AD I have taken London and Lizzy has researched Feudalism and began building and upgrading Longbows. She has also moved a settler pair down to rebuild a junk city, but when my axeman threatens she moves away, sparing me burning it again. On the other hand I was an idiot outside York, watching Mansa's horse archer walk up to the city defended only by an axeman and then attack successfully and take the city. Thankfully he doesn't burn it, and I retake it next turn using the sword I had STANDING OUTSIDE THE CITY.
In 760AD I have burned Nottingham and made peace with Lizzy since I couldn't locate her last city (it ended up being located on the ice above Mansa). Lizzy offered me Mysticism and Horseback riding to sweeten the deal. Mansa does little to threaten my empire, so I take my time and heal troops before burning Mansa's first junk city in the north. Mansa then founds another junk city on site of an old English junk city, which I burn with leftover war chariots upgraded to horse archers. I then prepare to take very defended Djenne using suicide cats. After taking Djenne Mansa will accept peace while giving me Polytheism and Meditation (which I still hadn't researched).
I spend the following turns building up the captured cities and shooting for some wonders â I build Great Library and Angkor Wat, loose Chitzen Itza, rush Notre Dame with a GE, and notice I have captured the Pyramids, Parthenon, and Sistine Chapel in London. I realize Lizzy had built Sistine the turn before I took the city, so thanks Lizzy. I revolt to Hereditary Rule and will remain there until I swap to Universal Suffrage in 500 or so years.
I then prepare to go to war with Mansa on my own terms, and eliminate him this time. I build up two identical armies of six cats and twelve maces (using upgraded leftover swords from the last war that had city raider two and three promotions for about half my armies). I plan to take two or three of Mansa's cities, burn the rest, knock out Lizzy if I can find her, and then keep the army rolling to attack Tokugawa or Mao if maintenance is under control. The war goes very well â Mansa has tons of defenders in his capital and two cities in the East (western cites have only two defenders each), but I use suicide cats and loose very few Maces. I take his capital and finish him off, having captured three of his cites total (Timbuktu, Tekedda, and having captured Djenne in the last war). I immediately declare on Lizzy and take out her two TOTAL iceball cites in the north, she's eliminated in 1490.
After this my notes get even more spotty â I basically knew I had things won â I had double the score of second place Roosevelt. I considerer going for a space victory, but after seeing how I already had over 40% of the area, I decide to go for my first higher-than-Noble domination win.
Basically before the next war I will shoot to Liberalism, win it, take Nationalism, build the Taj, take whatever tech it is that provides a free GM, and use the $$$ from the trade mission to fund deficit research for many turns to come at 90%.
I used my leftover forced from the campaign against Mansa to start a little war against Tokugawa in 1592AD. The situation is that I plan to attack Mao with Cavs, and am finishing researching Gunpowder in 1592. I will build Cavs and then attack Mao, take what cities I want, and then move on to Toku, but first I need to take out two of Toku's cities he has managed to build to Mao's East in order to not fight a two front war or loose territory to those cities' culture. I plan to get good use out of my remaining maces and cats, so I make two stacks (about 5 cats and 8 maces each) to take Toku's cities, planning to quickly take them, make peace, and declare on Mao. Mao however had other ideas â he declares on my one turn AFTER I declare on Toku. I have to use my offensive stacks as defenders to knock out Mao's stacks that are about to enter my territory, and basically we end up destroying each other's ability to field an army. I however have just finished researching Military Tradition and begin building Cavs in every city. A trickle of Cavs (and maces upgraded to rifles) quickly becomes a torrent however, and the writing is on the wall for Mao and Toku.
I accept peace with Toku as soon as I can (but AFTER I take and burn those two Eastern cities) in order to focus on Mao. My cats and cavs converge on his southern cities, and they begin falling like flies. He will research chemistry before I knock him out, but one grenadier and 3-4 longbows per city simply cannot match an army of combat four cavs and city raider three rifles with cats upgraded to cannon that can take out 60% cultural defenses in one turn.
In 1712AD I have taken Mao down to 2 cities â a junk city on an island to the south and a city surrounded by Caesar's culture to the far north. I have 52% of the land area, and am considering having to push for back door domination through the UN if knocking out Toku won't push me above 62% land area.
I declare peace with Mao and immediately declare on Toku. He is hopelessly backwards, and I'm able to field three different armies and run wild around his Civ. After all, there isn't any military rule about dividing an army in the face of INFERIOR forces. I culture bomb my last artist and bring my land total to 58% with Toku still having one city on an island, and me having one of his former cities still in revolt. I had been building Galleons in preparation of having to take the island (this is the moment I'm most proud of â I never would have had the foresight to do this a month ago). I do manage to take the island city in 1802, but in 1804 I get a border pop and reach 62.5% in 1804 and trigger domination victory in 1806.
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Conclusion:
I was obviously going to win this game by any victory type I wanted â I had over four times the production and GDP of Roosevelt, so it wasn't touch and go by any means, but I don't think I could have finished any faster with my current mediocre abilities as a player with any other victory type. I DO think I could have reached domination earlier however, if I had built less infrastructure and more units and therefore been willing to accept greater losses in exchange for faster progress. As I said however, I kept expecting this game to be harder than it was, so I played conservative throughout. The game could easily had gone differently had the AIs I attacked early had cities placed on more hills or if my territory had fewer happiness or health resources. Being able to knock out Saladin so easily and never having to worry about happiness or health made this game the easiest Monarch game I've played yet, even taking into account my rising (though still modest) abilities. This is easily attested to by the fact that I managed to achieve domination victory without allies where in my test game I was barely winning (or even loosing) the space race.
In summary I would say I managed to respond to my goals in the following ways:
-Continue to take out Civs and absorb their empires - staying small means being out-teched by financial civs
I did great on this point, taking out so many civs early was the way to go IMHO.
-Don't take a religion
Check â I saw no reason to in this game
-Keep a strong military by building at least one round of each defensive unit in every city to keep my power graph level about the lowest Ais
I never lagged in power, but unlike other games it wasn't because I had a lot of defenders, but rather because I had a large offensive strike force. Being ahead in tech meant that I could afford to lower research down to zero at one point during the game in order to upgrade all my defenders from longbows to rifles however.
-Put pressure on Mansa if possible.
Taking him out was the biggest change from my test games â the player had an advantage here because he started close and in a lousy location in terms of available high-food tiles as long as they attacked him fairly quickly.
-Watch out for barbs
Non-issue, as there were almost no barbs.
-Build more workers than normal - one for each city.
19 cities, 24 workers â Check.
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Short Version:
Short version is I played an aggressive game with no allies, after a strong start crushing Saladin, Lizzy, Mansa in turn, then building up for a final push on Mao and then Tokugawa to hit the domination threshold in 1806. Back-door domination was about 40 or so turns away IIRC, and rocketry about the same number of turns, so Domination was the quickest victory type I think I could have managed.
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Big Finish:
I really enjoyed this game, thanks to Sirian for seting it up, and thanks to the RB community for making this such an inviting place to play. This was my first RB game, but it won't be the last. The best thing I can say about this game is that preparing for it made me a much better Civ player, and making people enjoy the game more is exactly what these sort of sites should be all about.
Thanks for the ride.