Hey all,

I have been handling prince with random leaders and won pretty easily the last four or five times so I figured it was time to step up to monarch. Start with Haty, Monarch/Epic and pulled this lovely isolated start. I've read the startegy articles on isolated starts and all of them say, "Have a plan and stick with it". However, I there isn't much in terms of production on my little island and I am normally a warmonger, so I am just a little befuddled at what strategy option to pursue. So I pose the question to you, what would you do?

PS here is a save 3.19 BtS if you want to play some.

Hatty is pretty good for isolated. With the stone you could shoot for some wonders like hanging gardens, or possibly mids if you hustled from the start (it's a bit far from the capital). There's enough resources that your happy cap should be ok, but not great. You'll probably want to consider heavy prioritization on optics and astro to meet other civs. When I'm lonely, I tend to focus on those techs - you can get trade routes far before the AI if you're focused on them. I tend toward war too, but in peaceful starts, focus on developing land. Lots of workers/settlers, and currency/COL are important. You can ignore alphabet altogether if you'd like too - no need for it.

The production isn't that bad, or more appropriately not bad enough that you can't wonderspam. I would definitely go for the Great Lighthouse, the Pyramids, and the Temple of Artemis. One of the advantages of isolation is that you can afford to neglect your military and expand at your time (esp if you build the Great Wall). In my last LHC, I was able to build every wonder but 3 (I think that I just teched Military Tradition) on Monarch difficulty. Your island has only elephants and spices as happy resources, so I would suggest making Monarchy a priority. Good luck and isolation is very doable.

@michmbk, I'm not sure how useful the Hanging Gardens would be other than for the GE points. He's got way more health resources than he does happy resources. I would build it if I have the time, but I wouldn't make it a priority. Of course, you're a better player than I am, so I'm probably missing something.

You should only settle the fish sheep site in the east. The other two cities won't be worth it until biology/corporations/windmills.

@michmbk, I'm not sure how useful the Hanging Gardens would be other than for the GE points. He's got way more health resources than he does happy resources. I would build it if I have the time, but I wouldn't make it a priority. Of course, you're a better player than I am, so I'm probably missing something.

On monarch, if you rex out pretty quick, you should be able to get 6+ cities before hanging gardens, in which case it's not just the health, it's also the +6 pop that counts. Not to mention the GE points. I always liked that wonder a lot on that level - some games I'd time it well, and settle 2-3 cities right before finishing, and get as much as 8-9 pop from it. Dirt cheap with the stone - what is it, 150 hammers, and it gets the 1 pop cities going that much faster.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=275734

Above is a link to a similar thread (ie looking for help on an isolated start) that I created back in the day (patch 3.17) and was visited by some of our more illustrious compadres. Granted, this was on Prince.

I am not particularly fit to advise you, but what seem to be two key takeaways are:
1) hit your trade econ hard: get the GLH if possible.
2) rex as fast as you can. No, faster than that. (But, and also...don't crash your economy.)

Also, it seems clear that Hereditary Rule is going to be a major goal for your start.

Post your progress if you like! Good luck/ :goodjob:

The production isn't that bad, or more appropriately not bad enough that you can't wonderspam. I would definitely go for the Great Lighthouse, the Pyramids, and the Temple of Artemis. One of the advantages of isolation is that you can afford to neglect your military and expand at your time (esp if you build the Great Wall). In my last LHC, I was able to build every wonder but 3 (I think that I just teched Military Tradition) on Monarch difficulty. Your island has only elephants and spices as happy resources, so I would suggest making Monarchy a priority. Good luck and isolation is very doable.

I like the great lighthouse in this game, but I LOVE the pyramids. With the stone down there, you can slap them up pretty quickly. At that point, (in Representation) your three biggest cities get a nice happy boost, and the rest of your cities can be kept to a reasonable size by whipping out stuff and running lots of specialists. The boost from the specialists +3:science: will keep you up to speed on techs until you can get optics and trade your way back into the race.

As for health, you've got access to all three seafood resources, so almost all of your cities will benefit greatly from a harbor. The harbor will also play nicely with the Great Lighthouse, but not for a long time, since all of your trade routes will be domestic. Once you can establish foreign trade routes, you'll see another massive boost in the economy, which will be extremely useful as that will be right after you trade your way back into the tech race and will have a whole bunch of new techs to work on.

Speaking of trade routes and tech trades, I would strongly suggest that you DO NOT adopt a religion, and that you don't bother researching any religious techs besides CoL and Philosophy. Ideally, you could found a religion from one of those two, and then maybe consider building the Shwedagon Paya (which would require you to research meditation if you wanted to go this way) with a Great Engineer you might pop in the pyramids city. Representation and free religion are an excellent combination in isolation.

Lastly, once you find the rest of the world, take a look around and see if there's another civ that is also isolated or at least semi-isolated and lagging behind. If you want to wage war, my advice would be to make nice-nice with everybody until you can get astronomy (hopefully you can pop it with liberalism) and then go for Gunpowder->Chemistry->Steel. Once you have Liberalism in the bag, you can feel free to trade Education for all sorts of good things like engineering to help this along.

Then, take a few cannons and some muskets or Maces and go stomp the other weak civ. You'll find that this plan is exactly the thing that will not only finally bring you back up to equal or better in the power rankings, but it will also effectively double the size of your empire while the rest of the world is squabbling over religious differences.

Despite stone I do not see 'Mids as a super great wonder here. This is mainly because I am counting 2 happy resources on that island and enough food to get some cities much higher than just representation happy will allow. I like the look of HR much more and bulding the 'Mids to run HR is a questionable use of hammers. I would just go a standard Great Lighthouse, Great Library, and maybe Hanging Gardens/Parth. With HG I find building the aqueduct more annoying than spending the hammers on the wonder.

Of course I also try to avoid a specialist heavy early economy without trading partners so I'm biased in that regard. Island looks nice for coastal city spam and a bulb spree to Astro.

Despite stone I do not see 'Mids as a super great wonder here. This is mainly because I am counting 2 happy resources on that island and enough food to get some cities much higher than just representation happy will allow. I like the look of HR much more and bulding the 'Mids to run HR is a questionable use of hammers. I would just go a standard Great Lighthouse, Great Library, and maybe Hanging Gardens/Parth. With HG I find building the aqueduct more annoying than spending the hammers on the wonder.

Not that questionable IMO. Not like you need a super fast REX in isolation as I doubt anyone's gonna steal your land ;) . Also in isolation every tech counts so 'Mids -> HR -> Repr when you hit Astro isn't a bad choice as you can skip Monarchy in favor of faster Optics. GLH & TGL obviously is nice, but it's not a far cry to get those + 'Mids in isolation. I would probably favor using Repr all the way and just stagnating cities at the happy cap to mass tech to reach key eco techs -> Optics/Astro fast.

Don't get me wrong, Rep would be very nice on this island and could easily accomplish the same thing. I'm just very wary of the 'Mids if I'm not both industrious and in possesion of stone. It's come back to annoy me later more often then not.

Either way a tech path that lets GS bulb Optics and Astro for you would probably be advisable on Monarch. Whip in harbors, send out the caravels and swim in intercontinental trade routes ages before the AI.

Moving that farthest SE Sheep/Fish city north one tile would get it an extra mine.

Edit: 2 more mines actually. You'd avoid settling on one.

My main question that I was getting at was what strategy would you pursue? Space race, diplo, conquest, cultural? Based on what I have on the island......

@Lanksy
What would you do if you fall on a small island w/ Monthy and the only health resources are pig, cow, fish, clam and virtually no rivers :P (+6 health after harbor). No horses either to plan cav invasion later. Although it was possible to choke, it's ridiculous to require and build aqueducts to grow x.x...

As for the game, there is a good chance to use representation, since hatty is creative/spiritual and gets cheap theater/coliseums/temple, adding a religion (philosophy) might work. No extra upkeep due to units, however might need to touch the culture slider but w/ spec heavy it would not be so terrible. Under representation I'd not bulb but settle (save for philosophy).

The bright side is: no need for cottages spam.

My main question that I was getting at was what strategy would you pursue? Space race, diplo, conquest, cultural? Based on what I have on the island......
Right now you have no idea whether domination or conquest are realistic, have no idea what the diplo situation will be, and no way of guessing how a space race might go and, unless you picked them, don't even know who your rivals are. In fact the only VC that can be deided on that early is culture, and even that can fall apart if you fail to found religions.

There is no need to pick a VC at the very start of the game.
Where the guide says to have a plan and stick with it, all it really means is that you should decide on some goals, often short term ones, such as getting Optics to explore and make contact with AIs, or Astro to settle islands your caravels found, or setting up mass drafting and galleons for an invasion.

Don't get me wrong, Rep would be very nice on this island and could easily accomplish the same thing. I'm just very wary of the 'Mids if I'm not both industrious and in possesion of stone. It's come back to annoy me later more often then not.

I think the say way, though usually (read: almost always) the main reason 'Mids are bad is that while you build them instead of Settlers, AIs hog up your land. This is obviously not a problem in isolation.

Though another very good reason to play without 'Mids is to indeed learn to play without them, if one is used to having them :) .

for god's sake if you are Egyptian, you need the damn Mids :D

@Lanksy
What would you do if you fall on a small island w/ Monthy and the only health resources are pig, cow, fish, clam and virtually no rivers :P (+6 health after harbor). No horses either to plan cav invasion later. Although it was possible to choke, it's ridiculous to require and build aqueducts to grow x.x...


Maybe I'd build the pyramids, maybe I wouldn't. Depends on the size of the island, if Monty founded a religion, and lots of other stuff. Can always run an early specialist economy without the pyramids. Blasphemous, but entirely possible!

-----

Teelman - who knows how you should actually win. Space race with no Al on the island would suck. No Iron and now cannons are out the door. Are there any horses? What about coal? Are the other AI's wack jobs or a bunch of happy go luckies? Etc... etc... etc...

Play a bit. Develop the economy and take it from there. Just research in a very efficient and streamlined fashion. Don't go down the religious route just because "I can research Med in 3 turns now so why not?". Things like that will amplify over time isolated more so than normal.

Ok I understand avoid religions etc. Consesus seems like GLH while rexing costal cities. After that, beeline monarchy? Or start on the lib route and try to bulb astro? I know I will need HR for the happiness but it takes me down the religious path to myst/priest/ etc which seems to be the path to avoid for now.....or try oracle while im there and try and bulb MC from it with intent on colosus? Thoughts?

My thought is, where are you expecting to get all of the :science: to research all that stuff on your own without any trade partners and with only single :commerce: trade routes? You get cheap libraries. Build the pyramids and run two scientists everywhere until you can open up foreign trade routes and start enjoying the real benefits of the GLH. Also, don't forget, once you get to astronomy you will be able to trade for all of the happy and health resources you need to support the explosive growth in your cities that will suddenly be able to afford with your new trade route gold. If you're in representation, there's no reason for you to worry about growing most of your cities above size 6 until you get astronomy anyway, because you won't be able to afford it.


My main question that I was getting at was what strategy would you pursue? Space race, diplo, conquest, cultural? Based on what I have on the island......
Well, to go back to your first post, I think the "have a plan and stick with it" should be up to the point of what you should be doing until you find the rest of the world and assess the situation. As the others have said, you simply can't figure out what the best VC will be when you have no idea what your competition is doing.


What I was attempting to say was that my plan would be to:

Maximize science early, which on this island, would probably involve running lots of scientists
Focus your research path on the Economy (both now and setting up for the future), Optics, and then Liberalism->Astronomy
Don't be to slow to fill in those 9-10 cities, especially if you build the Great Lighthouse. Run lots of scientists to keep research going and don't worry if the slider is down at 20%-30%.
Find the rest of the world, assess the diplomatic situation, and trade your way back into the tech race.
Assess the strategic situation, and then work out a plan for the victory. If you find that there are other isolated civs, chances are that you will be able to beat them to galleons and some sort of huge military advantage that will give you the opportunity to double the size of your empire. Then you would probably be able to go space race, domination, or diplomatic.
If you find that you're the only one in isolation, and that a military strike might not be in your best interests any time soon, then start workign on a different plan.

Some thoughts on that dotmap: I'd do it a bit differently... You have multiple food resources being hogged by one city in a few places, I'd share them out.

For instance in the south-east wing of the island, I'd move all three cities one tile NE. (each) If you want that stone, settle on top of it, because you wont have any food to support working it anyways. Also you don't have to wait to build a quarry. If the mids is what you're going for, tech sailing and masonry and settle on top of it. The city south of that has great hills, almost no food. Move it NE and give it the sheep. Move the far east city NE and let it have the seafood.

Here's my two cents. (I guess this is more if I were to start this one from the beginning) Settle a good production city for workers/settlers, then settle (on top of it)the stone city with sailing tech for instant trade route. Then WonderSpam!! in the capital, everything that gives prophet points, engineer points or scientist points, get your academy, get bureaucracy, and settle everyone else into the capital. Run representation, get your theatre's/colloseums and globe theatre and bump up the culture slider to at least 10 or even 20, run scientist in other cities, you will be easily able to reach liberalism/astro and then meet the world, THEN decide what you're going to do with the game.

edit: Also I would definately go for some kind of religion here, even if you only spread it in the capital for Organized Religion(wonderspam) or Pacifism(gpspam). You're spiritual here so when you do meet AI's you can very easily switch to free religion or no religion. If you wonderspam you're going to get a great prophet, and you can likely bulb theology if you want.

I shadowed this to where the cultural victory was in hand - needed a break from all the losing I've been doing this week, and it looked like a fun start.

No screens, but basically did a hard hard rex. Oracled COL for religion, courthouses. Researched monarchy, then headed up the aesthetics line for great library, music/drama.

Rexed the island hard under HR, and tried for hanging gardens. Had settled my 11th city 2 turns before HG, and someone beat me to it! The failgold was nice, but the 11 pop boost would have been nicer. Had 12 cities in total, 2/3 of which were cottaged. One amazing GP farm on the northern tip of the island churning out artists under caste.

Supplemented tech rate with failgold from building stone wonders too late and losing them (mids, chichen itza). Turned off slider after rifling & democracy, and let free speech, cottages and cathedrals carry the day. US allowed me to rushbuy some of the religious buildings too. 3 sites with 10+ towns and an artist GP farm let me cruise to culture. Built nothing but units the whole game in the stone city to the south - for HR initially, and for power rating late. One annoyance when Sury declared, but quickly blew his landing force off the island.

When isolated with a lot of good cottage land, culture is always a viable option.

You can also make an advantage from the Egypt UB which gives +2 very early and cheap priest specialists slots. Angkor Wat is a quite cheap build with stone, so quick bulbing the Philosophy with the GS gives you religion for happiness, cheap temples for happiness and additional priest slot, clear start ahead AI on the wonder and Pacifism to speed up GP production.
With representation from Mids and Angkor Wat every priest specialist is +2 hammers, +1 gold and +3 beakers. With Great Priests you can bulb at least one more religion (Divine Right) or maybe even two (if the AI will not care to find Theology quickly), giving you two more cheap temple everywhere you want them to be. Being spiritual you can switch in and out between Slavery and Caste to have more specialists/whip unhappiness where and when it is needed. UB will expire with Astronomy but at that time you will have developed cities and can switch for Caste for longer time.

@michmbk

If you still have the game or can remember could you show me a dotmap of your city spots? I always like to see how others settle and to improve my city specialization. Also, when you said you turned off the slider after dem/rifle, which slider did you mean? Science or cult? I pretty consistently a warmonger but I would like to expand my VC ability. So anymore information on what you did would be awesome. Whcih religions were you able to get?

Teelman:


I don't think I even saved the game, and I went on to shadowing something else - I was pretty much flying through it after laying down my 3 cottage cities.

I typically war a fair amount, but culture can be a fast and easy VC in isolation - I did it in a number of the lonely hearts club games (think my LHC - Shaka game was a good example if you want screens/details, and i believe was back when I was at monarch level).

In terms of dotmapping, your first three cities were great - exact same spots as me. GP farm and two of my cottage sites - think they each were working around 10 cottages or so. I cottaged up thebes and heliopolis (legendary 1 & 2) right away, and quickly settled two more spots to the south as well - I think 2S of the sheep was on the river IIRC, and that was legendary city 3 - was running a bunch of cottages too. I think in the southwest was a spot with pig and the stone, which got farms and workshops post CS/MC. It along with a few other of my cities simply produced happy police so the three legendary cities and the GP farm could grow.

I also settled 1N of the rice (desert would have been a waste tile anyway), 1S of your blue dot, squeezed in two other cities on the southwest coast, and three cities on the south side of the eastern peninsula sharing the (3?) food resources as best I could. I think your dotmap looked pretty good overall - we settled fairly similar places.

After democracy and rifling, I turned tech to 0% and culture up as high as I could (was 100% by end game via building wealth in cities). I had confu & tao, and islam and buddhism spread to me. Built the cheap confu & tao temples early to get the cathedrals in the legendary cities (took a long time because 2 of them didn't have many hammers), and when islam and buddhism were spread, that's when I decided to go to democracy. Switched to US, massed gold for 5-10 turns, and rushbought the temples/cathedrals for those religions too. I had settled the first few artists, and saved up the last 5-6 for the final culturebomb push. That GP farm was spectacular - it built a granary, lighthouse, library, the NE using the ivory and a couple workshops, and then simply ran 7 artists at size 12 for a long, long time.

Meanwhile, two cities basically produced nothing but units all game. They were weak units (mainly war chariots), and I upgraded them to knights when sury invaded, and used them to repel him off the island. Didn't need them as happy police once the culture slider went up.

This looks like a good case for 'Mids Rep driven specialist heavy economy. Any cities that can have 2+ food resources should become specialist havens. The capital can be your wonderspamming, cottaged site. This allows early teching as well as a big bureaucracy bonus after getting CS. Stonehenge is unnecessary since you are a CRE leader and will want to use scientist specialists instead of prophets. However, if you are able to grab the Henge it will only help in allowing a non-caste system economy to run 4 specialists with a cheap library (thanks CRE) and a very inexpensive obelisk.

Any city sites that have only 1 food source should still be cottaged up heavily. Mine any hills and have at least 1 great production city for future fast military. I'd use that city for 'building' research in the earlier stages of the game (when military means nothing but unit support costs to an isolated civ).

Once you have CoL, consider switching to caste system and spamming great scientists. Use one to bulb Philo and definitely switch to Pacifism. Very little military + no upkeep pacif means tons of fast GP and very reduced maintenance. Bulb most of education, and make sure to build an academy and settle the rest of your GP in your capital (since this cottage spammed bureau dream will become your Oxford city).

Personally, I prioritize Guilds/banking for mercantilism's free specialists in this type of situation. Figure that with 12 cities, that's 12 free scientists which means 72 free :science: per turn before multipliers.

I like to leave off getting optics until I'm close enough to Liberalism that my religion (usually either Conf or Taoism) will not sour relations too much before switching to free religion. Of course, if you wait too long, you may lose the circumnavigation bonus, but AI doesn't prioritize Optics very much, so you should be okay.

That's my 2:commerce:, and I'd be more specific if my boss didn't keep coming into my office!

Isn't this the beauty of civ. You have some people look at the land, and they think mids/rep/specialists. Others, like me, see cottages with a GP farm under HR. All good players giving advice, and you get totally different views that are both viable, and both could work great in the long run.

That's why we all keep coming back to this game.

So true! I can definitely see cottage spam on this one as well. However, since isolated with stone, I figure why not wonderspam and utilize Rep specialists/settled GP? You can cottage spam most games, but I rarely see such a wonderfully wonderspam welcoming map :D

The plug first: come by the link below to get in on a just-starting Monarch level up thread, as the Monarch Student Thread gets passed to the next generation. First game, hosted by Meatbuster, is just about to drop with...what Meatbuster is calling Monarch Student^ I - Elizabeth.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=333253

And post if you can! :yup:

And here are a bunch of Monarch level-up type resources I've been collecting. Hope they're useful.



Specifically or Potentially Monarch

Monarch Student Index:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7976360#post7976360

King of the World (3.7 Monarch on Earth maps):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7811424

Nobles Club for Monarchs - (ie choose your level @ Monarch)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=273515

Monarchist's Cookbook final game (3.17)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7168043#post7168043

Monarchs Espionage Economy Walkthrough
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325793

Monarchs Specialist Economy Walkthrough by Madscientist
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310071

Just win monarch meatbuster
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325897

Master Directory - Not all Monarch
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=258697


Hope you'll come by and breathe new life into MS thread.