Ducki does PTW at Monarch - a bit more War

[ducki]

For those that followed "Ducki went Regent" you already know I love feedback. For those that didn't, please feel free to chime in with hints, tips, suggestions, etc. Also, this thread will be screenshot-heavy and savefile-heavy.


Ok, to kick things off, I'll show a screenshot of my starting point and follow that with a 4000BC savefile for anyone that wants to play along.

Monarch, Standard size, Pangea(medium), Sedentary barbs, 5billion yrs, Random civ - turned out to be China.

This is my first (hopefully) full length Monarch game, as well as my first (hopefully) full length PtW game.

In case anyone wants to play for comparison without spoilers, I'll hold off on asking my questions until after the starting point screenshot and 4000BC savefile.

[ducki]

Here's the SAV. Remember, this is for the PtW Expansion.

Curious - Autosaves are about a Meg each, but manually saving knocked it down to 63K - normal? I hope it works.

[ducki]

Alrighty, now to current times.

I got the Great Library but Korea(I think) stole the Gardens out from under me. I'm 14 turns away from Sistine, but nearly everyone else is working on it too. I don't have a FP yet, I've been too busy trying to keep my citizens happy and my army reinforced. My early expansion got rather cramped rather early, so I've already beaten on Montezuma once and this is my second war with Tokie - he was wandering around near my capital, so I told him to leave, at which point he declared war. I immediately bribed Monty with a couple of techs, but the fool is sending spearmen and jags against Pikes and Med. Inf. Oh well, keeps him weak for me.

As you can see from this screenshot, I finally generated a Great Leader. I gotta tell ya, having 80% of my horsemen be Elite sure feels neat, but it still took longer than expected to generate a Leader.

I've been taking out Tokie's Medieval Infantry with horsemen by denying him the opportunity of actually attacking with them and trying to attack them from hilltops and mountains. And it worked. My 2/1/2 Elite Horses have killed half a dozen of his 4/2/1 Med. Inf. only losing about 3 hitpoints total. I did lose a Horse to a Pikeman while attacking Osaka, but the Leader is worth losing an Elite.


Anyway, I can get peace any time I want it, but I've got 7 or 8 more turns I have to fight to fulfill my agreement with Montezuma, so here's my most pressing questions.


What do I do with this leader? Should I spend the money to spy on the AI cities to find out if I need to use the leader on that? Should I just hope for the best and use him for an Army? FP? Seems wrong for the FP right now, but I could be convinced.

Where would you place your FP if you were on this map? I was thinking about Nanking until I noticed all that jungle - seems like it wouldn't actually help production that much.
Second thought was Canton - I'm gonna have to do some pruning on America(light blue) soon, I think, so that would be good for expanding, assuming I don't lose that city.


Monarch+PtW is a lot tougher than Regent+Civ3 - these guys severely out-expanded me in the REX phase - America and Japan both planted cities one turn ahead of and one square away from a settler on separate occasions. Bastards!

Anyway, I know my tile-development is lacking in places and my road network needs some (a lot of) work.

So, lemme have it. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? I've never really gone to war this early, this often, or this intentionally. Normally I play "builder" and have a heinous culture lead at this point, but I figured as long as I was playing a military civ, I might as well use my military.

Screenshot here, SAV in the next post.

[ducki]

Here's the sav, and I guess I should enumerate the opposition.

Pinkish-purple - Me, China
Red-East - Japan
Green-South - Aztec
Lt.Blue-WestSouthwest - America
DkBlue-FarSouth - Korea (I think)
Yellow-SouthWest - Mongol
Purple-FarWest - Dang, I forgot one. /sigh

Well, here's the SAV.

[badman]

Since you're militaristic and not having enough cities IMHO, you'll need to conquer some civs. So I think you should build an army, then the heroic epic and hope for some more leaders.
But don't build a horsemen army. If you don't have anything better than horsemen, build a FP instead. Unfortunately, all your cities are close to your capitol.
You could build one in Tlacopan and conquer the Aztecs or you could build it in Nara and conquer the Japanese.
You also should think about taking some of the American cities because they are close to your capital, have lots of grasslands, and America seems to be too strong.
(I can only tell from the screenshot, I don't have PtW).

[Aeson]

Curious - Autosaves are about a Meg each, but manually saving knocked it down to 63K - normal? I hope it works.

Auto saves aren't compressed, manual saves are. So it's normal.

[ducki]

I hadn't originally planned on fighting a war with Horsemen against Feudalism level opponents. All those elite horsemen were leftovers from the first Japanese War and the Aztec War - I was just planning to upgrade them to knights and then go to war, but Japan forced my hand.

I agree that America is a prime target. I think I've effectively hampered Japan and if I make peace before the Aztecs do, I think those two will likely slow each other down enough for me to go against America.

I'm having some Happiness problems which is why the Sistine is such a dilemma. I want to do an Army and go for the Epic, but that's not likely to garner me any happy citizens in the near future.

So, is the money worth it to spend on spying on the other AIs to see if I can just build out Sistine normally and lose out on some of my Horseman-to-Knight upgrades temporarily, or should I just hope I beat the AIs to Sistine and create a Knight Army as soon as I get Knights and wreak havoc in America?

I could use the leader on the FP in Canton, near America, but Canton's production is already pretty high, so I could just build that normally and have my FP fairly well located for when I move my palace, probably to the American-Mongol border on the other side of America - eventually.

I'm torn. I want an Army for the Epic, but I also need happy citizens. I've got 3 luxuries but very few marketplaces yet. The only wonder I've gotten is the Great Library and I only have 1 or two Cathedrals already built.

I'm researching Engineering, I've got Theology, Education, Feudalism and....uhhh.. Monotheism(?) - hopefully I can trade Engineering for whatever the AI is researching. Chivalry would be prime on my list.

Thanks for the input so far.

[badams52]

Without PtW, I can only give comments based on your screenshots, so...

If I were in your shoes, I would be building many, many more offensive units and preparing my overwhelming forces for taking the rest of Japan and Aztec territory soon. I might build build med. infantry to overwhelm Japan before they can get their samurai! Stacked med. infintry and pikemen though slower would overrun the Japanese easlily. I wouldn't wait to build RIDERS, but would certainly get Chivalry next. Once Japan has samurai, you are in trouble.

They attacked you which will help against WW so take their cities while you have the advantage. Horsemen just don't cut it when you're trying to attack pikemen. The wars take too long and you need far superior numbers.

The FP placement will depend upon your plans for expansion. Just looking at the map, I would consider the Aztec capital a good spot. Canton is too close to your capitol unless you are planning to move your capitol later. If you continue warring, you could wait till your second (or third) great leader to build the FP.

For your leader, I would consider 2 options. If you are really worried about not getting Sistine's then you could switch Beijing to building Sun Tzu's (a very good wonder for warring) and quick build Sistine's. The other would be to build an army, but you really don't have good units for an army at present. Consider Chivalry as a good next step in the research department so you could start building Riders! A force of Riders would really destroy your rivals much quicker. Also, when you are warring with China, Leaders are a good source of wonder producers, so now is the time to war, war, war and build wonders with your leaders.

You could prune America a bit ig you like. I usually fight one enemy at a time and take all their cities unless WW prevents me from continuing or I don't feel like taking out their last island cities. Taking all their cities prevents cultural reversion. Even if this causeses me to be behind in tech, I will catch up once the newly aquired territories reach their potential.

[badams52]

You have the money, I would see if I can outbuild them. It doesn't take too much money to check their cities building Sistine. You wouldn't need to bother if the city is small, as you would certainly out produce it.

I noticed your researching engineering which I think was a mistake. You forgot about your UU! IIRC, horsemen won't upgrade to riders! Attack with riders, get GA, build unsurmountable lead!

It sounds like your on level with the others on your tech, so warring shouldn't be much of a problem.

[ducki]

Originally posted by badams52
You have the money, I would see if I can outbuild them. It doesn't take too much money to check their cities building Sistine. You wouldn't need to bother if the city is small, as you would certainly out produce it.

I'll also have to pay for embassies for many of them...

I noticed your researching engineering which I think was a mistake. You forgot about your UU! IIRC, horsemen won't upgrade to riders! Attack with riders, get GA, build unsurmountable lead!

1 - I'd hoped to trade Engineering for Chivalry
2 - no upgrade? seriously? crap, that's the main reason I went horsemen instead of Swords->MedInf
3 - How do riders compare to Samurai? I reckon I should check that.

It sounds like your on level with the others on your tech, so warring shouldn't be much of a problem.

Yeah, the GLibrary just got nixed by Education a couple of turns ago.

If I can't upgrade my horses, that's gonna put a serious crimp on my previous plans. Hell's bells.

[vmxa1]

First I do not recall about the upgrade, which is sad as I have played China a bunch of times and I am right now.
I see the capitol is not growing and that is bad and can be fixed. You need more workers by now. One city had 4 tiles that needed improvements. That is costing you.
I am not to fond of not having libs in cities by this stage either. Some are building cathedrals that are not having any unhappy pop, I would go for libs or colosseums. Colosseums are not as good, but get up sooner.
One was building a courthouse with very little corruption and no lib/colo.
I guess this is debateable, but I prefer to go down the Eng/Iven/Gun path to Theolgy anyway. At monarch, you can get by with out Sistines.
As it turns out I decided to try China with PTW to see if they old civs behaved they same as before PTW.
I have 9 cities in 90BC and 1 settler out and another coming. You really should not be in last place by 4xx AD.

[Tharsonius]

I'm playing a game with china right now
horseman can be upgraded to riders for 80 gold each

you will have a lot of fun now, this riders rock!
you overrun your enemy in a few rounds with no problem, if you build enouth

and dont forget to use some of them to run arround and pillage like mad behind the lines

[badams52]

Originally posted by ducki

1 - I'd hoped to trade Engineering for Chivalry
2 - no upgrade? seriously? crap, that's the main reason I went horsemen instead of Swords->MedInf
3 - How do riders compare to Samurai? I reckon I should check that.

A yes, a trade. You might get one if the AI is researching it. The Mongols and the Japanese probably will, but I don't know if the others will. I probably would have just gone for Chivalry and hoped to trade for Engineering.

Riders 4.3.3
Samurai 4.4.2

Just checked it, horsemen won't upgrade to Riders, but they will upgrade to Cavalry later. I don't think any UU can be upgraded into. You can upgrade the UU, but you can't upgrade a unit to become a UU.

I would agree with vmxa1 on his assesment of your building, though sometimes I do have libraries at this point for culture reasons and/or research reasons if I'm caught up and the AI is too slow. But I would definitely agree with him that you need more workers. My feeling is that cities using tiles without improvements are a waste of population.

During wartimes, often almost all of my cities (at least the ones with barracks) are producing units. If I have enough units, some cities will produce improvements and then I'll switch them later.

I think soon you will have the game well in hand, unless PtW AIs are better at keeping pace.

[badams52]

Originally posted by Tharsonius
I'm playing a game with china right now
horseman can be upgraded to riders for 80 gold each

you will have a lot of fun now, this riders rock!
you overrun your enemy in a few rounds with no problem, if you build enouth

and dont forget to use some of them to run arround and pillage like mad behind the lines

hmm, must have changed it in PtW. Pre PtW, I couldn't upgrade horsemen, and I just checked it.

[Tharsonius]

you use v1.17f or better?

if you do, then it must new in PTW, I never played china pre PTW