Epic Eight - EGYPT

[The Judge]

My report can be found here.

Thanks for the game.

[Sourdough]

Thanks very much for the suggestions, Sullla. I appreciate you taking the time to consider them since I didn't give much information.

I think I overused the whip in this game, which is why my cities were so small. I tended to panic a bit when at war and whipped units quite regularly. Never took my hand off it, so to speak. I'll start looking more at city growth in future games. Your report showed my how a small city can still play an important role, but a few big ones won't hurt.


To Atlas: Thanks as well. When I read your comments I started laughing out loud. If there was any doubt I'm a noob you erased it. War Chariots, eh? Unique Units, eh? What concept!

When I saw the horses, I automatically thought "Horse Archers" and never looked back.

I resolve to spend some time thinking about my civ's unique abilities prior to starting my next game

You are correct about my early research path. I spent a couple turns on Mysticism and then bailed out as I figured I was already too far behind to found an early religion.

Regarding notes and screenshots -- you're right. It's a habit I'm learning along with the game itself. One question: How do you folks get the 'wide angle' view and / or 'close up' view during battles? I can't seem to recreate either effect.



One final note: I've read a lot of RB reports already but it's a special rush to read reports of a game I've also played. What a great experience! I learned so much from reading the other Egypt reports and I'm looking forward to reading the other Epic 8 reports too. I'm already looking to the next RB event!

[LKendter]

Well this has definitely been a popular event. Unlike my very late epic 6 report with a lousy 2 hits, this one has 44 started and 37 finished. Despite the lack of pretty, it looks like I got a lot of readers.

[NeonElephant]

My (rather modest) report can be found here.

This was my first RB event. Thanks to Sirian and Griselda for running it!

[Swiss Pauli]

Nice win, especially considering it was your first effort at both Monarch and Culture!

[Swiss Pauli]

My (rather modest) report can be found here.

This was my first RB event. Thanks to Sirian and Griselda for running it!

An excellent game seeing it marked a jump from Noble; if I'd have tried this level-leap I'd surely have been wiped out in the BCs.

[Sullla]

First ever Monarch game, first ever cultural win! That deserves a drink.

It was interesting to see the slow tech pace in your particular world; I wonder why that was. My guess would be due to the fact that you didn't discover Alphabet until such a late date (600AD). Liberalism not falling until the mid-1500s, State of Liberty lasting until almost 1800, and the AIs still not even close to launching in 1950 - it was a great setup for a Cultural game!

It was also surprising to see Mao become so marginalized (I guess he was taken out by Caesar) while your southern expansion push left Mansa Musa a lot stronger than he was in many other games, and a major power player. It's fun to see how the player's choices of where to settle influence the actions of the AI. Thanks for the report, it definitely sounds like you had fun!

[Sullla]

Another first game on Monarch, another first win, excellent! Your retrospective comments seemed to be forshadowing a gloomy end, so it was a bit of a surprise to see that you won. Was that a case of Sirian-esque misdirection?

I think the winning strategic move was cozying up with Caesar once it became apparent he had an unbeatable army. Kind of rare to see an AI Rome found Buddhism too (actually, I don't think I've ever seen that before this game!) That combined with the elimination of Saladin in the medieval years left you in great position to take the win. Quite an early finish too! How did you manage to research all the way up to Computers and still win in 1893?

Thanks for the report.

[pling]

1 down, 7 to go Egypt's (hopefully) the hardest tho ...

Basic stats: 28 people got the save, 16 reported and 13 included sufficiently detailed screenshots for me to work out where they put their cities.

I took the AI city positions from paleman's report - I decided I should go with a human civ that wasn't right on top of Egypt to allow the AI to do what it wanted, and paleman's was the first America report I read with enough detail of where the Egypt cities were The AI cities are the little cyan dots.

My cut-off date for cities was ~150AD, as that was the first war in my game (no AI-AI wars before that) - so I figured that was the limit for peaceful expansion for the AIs. People being people, that means some people had already conquered a Civ or 2 by that point, so have many more cities than the AI had



I did a colour coded one, as well. Interestingly there wasn't much overlap between prefered sites - the highest number of people to settle on any given spot was 5 (out of 13).

Key: 1 settlement = black, 2 = yellow, 3 = blue, 4 = red and 5 = pink.



We also, collectively, don't agree that much with the AI - not a surprise, but worthy of note anyway. The only exceptions are the capital (where 5 people settled in place, just like the AI) and that blue dot to the south of the capital.

[The Judge]

It was interesting to see the slow tech pace in your particular world; I wonder why that was.

It was also surprising to see Mao become so marginalized (I guess he was taken out by Caesar) while your southern expansion push left Mansa Musa a lot stronger than he was in many other games, and a major power player. It's fun to see how the player's choices of where to settle influence the actions of the AI. Thanks for the report, it definitely sounds like you had fun!

Thanks for the read (you, too, Swiss Pauli).

Re: Tech pace - Agreed. Having never played a Monarch game, I was expecting to get mauled in the Tech race. It wasn't too terrible, all things considered. There were two occasions where I could shop Tech A or Tech B around to the various neighbors and stock up on 3-4 others that I had missed. Had Tech Trading been turned off for this game, I bet I would've had a harder time of things.

Re: Mao/Southern Living - I didn't realize that I'd done something different until I started reading the other reports and seen a lot of others push to the north. My choice was entirely based on a fear that, if I didn't get copper early, I was going to get rolled by somebody. Closest copper was in the south, thus Memphis was dropped in that area. Then I saw Zapotec as easy pickings (plus Ivory) and - boom - without knowing it, I had the Chinese sealed off. Mao could only move north in a thin strip and when Rome finally attacked, they just mowed through him like they were running downhill.

The only other Civ that lost territory to any degree was Saladin. First to the English during one of the many, many, many wars they had and then to me from culture. When I watched the replay, everyone's pocket of influence pretty much stayed the same. Not expected, but I think those conditions made victory possible.

And I have much love for Mansa now. I've asked for military help in other games, but never seen that type of immediate and awesome response. Double-digit stack of Rifles?