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I played my first game as Monty at the weekend and was a little unhappy with the roll of the dice as he never does well against me and I’ve seen his unique unit take such a pasting on the forums. Still, play on I thought.
Well it turns out he’s great!
My approach was pretty simple, having established that I had company on my island I decided to get to war. I slapped down Stonehenge to get the culture flowing from whatever I was about to conquer and then got down two high production cities while bee-lining to iron working.
By the time I got iron working I had three cities, two workers and three barracks. I had also met Peter, Huyan and Saladin. Plenty of targets but a big island with plenty of iron and copper for all my foes to build axemen with. Ah well, Saladin didn’t have Bronze Working yet, or if he did, he wasn’t rocking slavery so I picked on him first. His towns were guarded with one or two archers and happily mostly built in jungle. Without axemen he was pretty easy to turn over. I captured plenty of workers and six or seven cities to supplement my own, including an absolutely beautiful Mecca, six sea resources, four mines and sugar. Wonderful!
Huyan did have Bronze Working now, but I could see he hadn’t yet hooked up his copper so no axemen there and my Jaguars were quite upgraded now. I took three cities on the first two turns of war and split his empire in two and deprived him of his only copper source. He still had two iron but I was not at all sure he had iron working yet. Anyway, though he had two defenders per town one was always a Quecha. In the end, taking out the Incans was easier than the Arabs.
By this point there was no doubt that Peter had Iron Working but also, the reason I’d left him till last was that his only supply of copper and iron were both at the southern tip of the landmass and not hugely attractive to him. In the end, I was able to declare war on him and march through his lands before he managed to hook them up and start to counter me. Truthfully though, by that time he hadn’t a chance. I had a huge army of highly promoted soldiers, probably a dozen Jaguars at that point with City Raider 3, Strength 2 and Cover plus a large support of my own axemen and archers.
In short, I’m not sure if I got lucky or if being able to take a near iron age unit to war a thousand years before your rivals is really the advantage it turned into. Combatwise, it felt even more powerful than a successful slingshot giving you macemen early. Admittedly I don’t then have the benefit of having Civil Service or what have you, but I did have Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam and Stonehenge, Great Library, Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Great Lighthouse (captured), Hanging Gardens plus something like forty cities by the year 500 which I’d say is a more than fair trade.
All played on Continents, Marathon, Monarch.
Well it turns out he’s great!
My approach was pretty simple, having established that I had company on my island I decided to get to war. I slapped down Stonehenge to get the culture flowing from whatever I was about to conquer and then got down two high production cities while bee-lining to iron working.
By the time I got iron working I had three cities, two workers and three barracks. I had also met Peter, Huyan and Saladin. Plenty of targets but a big island with plenty of iron and copper for all my foes to build axemen with. Ah well, Saladin didn’t have Bronze Working yet, or if he did, he wasn’t rocking slavery so I picked on him first. His towns were guarded with one or two archers and happily mostly built in jungle. Without axemen he was pretty easy to turn over. I captured plenty of workers and six or seven cities to supplement my own, including an absolutely beautiful Mecca, six sea resources, four mines and sugar. Wonderful!
Huyan did have Bronze Working now, but I could see he hadn’t yet hooked up his copper so no axemen there and my Jaguars were quite upgraded now. I took three cities on the first two turns of war and split his empire in two and deprived him of his only copper source. He still had two iron but I was not at all sure he had iron working yet. Anyway, though he had two defenders per town one was always a Quecha. In the end, taking out the Incans was easier than the Arabs.
By this point there was no doubt that Peter had Iron Working but also, the reason I’d left him till last was that his only supply of copper and iron were both at the southern tip of the landmass and not hugely attractive to him. In the end, I was able to declare war on him and march through his lands before he managed to hook them up and start to counter me. Truthfully though, by that time he hadn’t a chance. I had a huge army of highly promoted soldiers, probably a dozen Jaguars at that point with City Raider 3, Strength 2 and Cover plus a large support of my own axemen and archers.
In short, I’m not sure if I got lucky or if being able to take a near iron age unit to war a thousand years before your rivals is really the advantage it turned into. Combatwise, it felt even more powerful than a successful slingshot giving you macemen early. Admittedly I don’t then have the benefit of having Civil Service or what have you, but I did have Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam and Stonehenge, Great Library, Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Great Lighthouse (captured), Hanging Gardens plus something like forty cities by the year 500 which I’d say is a more than fair trade.
All played on Continents, Marathon, Monarch.
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