Hey all,

I've just managed to construct my first Monarch winning position from a non-isolated start. I'd be very interested in any advice on how some of the players here think the game should be played, based on the start position and perhaps a play through.

The map was generated from the Tectonics script, with all possible other settings random. It's one of the smallest map types (Tiny maybe, but Tectonics maps seem a bit larger than normal ones) with 3 other random Civs. Aggressive AI and Raging Barbarians are both on. I got Peter the Great's Russia as my civ from the dice roll. I think that this is a very nice start overall, so if anyone is interested at taking their first shot at Monarch this is definately a winnable game (I've had a few starts where I've felt that I was toast from the beginning - this wasn't one of them).

If someone will tell me how to do a spoiler block, I'll post the actions I took and maybe a few more saves from later in the game.

Thanks in advance for your advice and/or stories!

To see how spoilers block done do quote of somebody post with spoiler block and see for yourself.


Or remove spaces here
[ spoiler]
[ /spoiler]

Thanks. Below is what I did with the game.


Scouting the map revealed that the map had turned out to be a low-water map, meaning that it was a pangea. The other AIs were Izzy to the NW, Cyrus to the NE, and Washington to the SE.

I actually can't recall exactly what I did early, besides building a city to the east that had floodplains, cows (I think), and wheat as well as being coastal. During that time, it was necessary to build up a big military to deal with the barbarians. I turned out to have Iron in the capital's fat cross, so that was no problem. I basically expanded along the coast to the west, until I ran into the mountain/hill range and Izzy's borders.

By that time, the AIs had filled up the available space. Izzy had expanded across the mountains into the middle of the map, Washington had nabbed a barbarian city on the eastern end of the flood plains, and Cyrus was just plain big to the NE. Izzy, unlike Cyrus and Washington, was behind in technology.

That made me decide to go after her cities in the middle of the map, which included quite a few resources that would be nice to have. The key was that I had units from the Middle Ages well before she got Feudalism. After building an army, I stomped her plains cities and the nearest city over the mountains that gave me access to gold. The last had to be taken away from Longbows, so I decided to stop there.

The next phase of the game was basically researching to Military Traditions as fast as possible. The trick was that when it came down to it, I had to trade for horses from Cyrus. On the other hand, I finished the Taj Mahal only a couple turns after finishing Mil. Tradition. That meant plenty of Cossacks.

Cossacks that Washington wasn't ready for - he'd gotten Cavalry of his own in a detour from the Democracy path. All the rest of his units were straight out of the Middle Ages. It was a slaughter, and I took the heart of his empire which included his capital and the Confucian holy city (which had spread to everyone but Izzy, incidentally). I also got horses ASAP via culture bombs after taking his horse city. After he got Rifles and I'd finished mopping up the backlines (I'd gone straight for the holy city) I signed peace.

That meant that I could make a 180 with my troops and go do the same thing to Izzy. Exactly the same thing. Only this time I declared peace when I ran out of worthwhile targets. The reason that she was behind for the whole game was that she had almost no fresh water, so the only reason I finally attacked was that I was getting close to Biology. I signed peace when she had two cities deep in the hills that would have been more trouble to take than they were worth. Another culture bomb on my newest border with Cyrus meant that my new cities wouldn't be too culture-starved.

And that was where I stopped, at 1800 AD. I have the lead in points by a large margin over Cyrus. I'm probably going to beeline for Industrialism (I have oil available) and roll over him for domination. Neither Washington nor Izzy are a threat, at this point, and I'm way bigger than Cyrus one-on-one.


Attached is the savegame from my current position. Feel free to give me advice on this save, but don't spoil it if you play ahead please.