Monarch Students game - climbing from Prince

So here we are. The last Toku NC game revealed a little bunch of people (myself included) ready to try the jump from Prince to Monarch. We decided to make it public to share opinions and hopefully get some input from the experts. I've read the jump from Prince to Monarch can be quite harsh, so I hope a public game will make it less...painful. The main differences are free archery to the AIs and increased barb activity. And, of course, slightly better bonuses to the AIs.

We opted for a random leader. Gcm4738 suggested to pick one of the Caesars, but I think praetorians are like playing on a lower level, in some circumstances. But obviously we don't want an underpowered leader, either, so I discarded the first two random selections (Saladin and Sitting Bull...I know, they have their own strenghts, but I don't think they are well suited for a difficulty jump).

The third generated leader is arguably one of the best. And somehow I never played as him so far. So here we go with our mighty leader:




His UU:



And the UB:




About the settings, again, nothing fancy. No self-conferred bonuses and a standard continents map.
The boring settings:




A couple map regenerations for the starting location. The first was a horrible tundra start. The second had stone in the BFC (industrious and stone...not your average game). The third, stone AND gold. Finally, the fourth starting location:



I've explored for some turns and I think this map is well suited for this kind of game. We are not isolated and there is decent land around the starting site. The neighbors are not the easiest people to get around with, but nothing too extreme, either.

I don't think we need to set any kind of rules for this game. Just use the spoiler tags when posting reports. Of course, above-Monarch players are more than welcome to play and hopefully give us some advice.

EDIT: The general consensus was to play whatever the game throws at us. But some people are struggling a bit on this map and TMiT think it's too hard for the first Monarch game. Giving his experience, it's probably true, so I'm adding a hint:



More specific hint, with spoilers about a leader and a strategic resource:





For the Monarch wannabes, I think we should post reports in segments. Something like 4000 BC - 1 AD, 1 - 1000, 1000 - 1600, 1600 - end. This way we can easily compare our progress.

I think that's all. The 4000 BC save is attached.
Have fun and good luck.


EDIT: Added Single Malt's WB save, thanks

EDIT 2: Removed the first WB save and added the right one, now working properly on all speeds. WARNING for the people playing with the old WB save: game ends are messed up on speeds different than epic. Sorry again for the inconvenience, it's fixed now.

And thanks, Single Malt.

Industrious with Stone
Mids + SE for the win

"Industrious with Stone
Mids + SE for the win"

Yeah, but he binned that one, look. (look? - I've been spending too much time around Bristol!)

Corn. Spirtual+tortilla factory for the win!

Seriously... Ok I have to put on my thinking cap and fill my system with nicotine. Then I'll give my starting thoughts...

Thanks for doing this Ai Shizuka. Hope others will join in and follow our... progress? As we flame out miserably on monarch! I'll post starting thoughts and then at 1000 BC

I feel that we should have had that Stone and Gold in the BFC as this is Monarch

I feel that we should have had that Stone and Gold in the BFC as this is Monarch

Click to expand...

Yeah - I would've gone with that!

Whoa - spiritual and industrious. How much more opposite from Tokugawa can you get!?



You could have given us financial... or at least organised or expansive or something... This will be a good test!

gcm4738 said:

Spiritual - is there a more useless trait in the game?

Click to expand...

Why the heck do you think Spiritual is a weak trait? Not only does it save your entire empire a dozen or so useless turns of anarchy that you experience in a typical game, but if you actually use the trait it's very powerful... I'm playing it in my latest game and I don't think I've enjoyed this much freedom in a while.

For one, it makes you able to enjoy the benefits of caste system (specialists for specific merchant/scientist GP farm, the extra hammer for workshops is very handy after guilds!) without sacrificing the production of slavery, which usually I can't give up for most of the early game. Also it lets me easily strengthen the GP farm with pacifism when I want a great person asap... without having completely abandon organized religion.

Plus its a military trait... you can easily shift to Theocracy during military build-up and then back to whatever you want right after, a back-and-forth switch you can't really justify without it. Also quick nationhood switches for brief periods, just to draft some guys out.

And as a diplo tool its huge. You can accept demands to change civics/religions without much consequence. Those +1 merits add up quickly. And sometimes you can instantly manipulate diplo to make trades... tech trade with your friends sharing your religion, and then temperarily switch to an enemy religion to boost your relations and trade with them. Situational, but it can work!

You didn't even mention the lack of anarchy in your comment, have you even played spiritual before? And cheap temples aren't bad either... build specific temple-boosting wonders with industrious (university of sankore, spiral minaret, apostolic palace and sistine chapel) and you have very powerful and very cheap buildings.

I may play through this and try for a cultural victory, which I still don't have at Monarch.

For the moment, though, I'm just dropping in to defend spiritual - it's one of those traits where once you've played with it, you really miss it when it's gone (creative is another one). You do have to work to leverage it, though - just think about what you're doing and what you plan to do every few turns, and work out if another civic would be better suited. Want to bulb to liberalism? Try Caste System. War build up? Theocracy. In the middle of a long war? Police State. In a close wonder race? Organised Religion. And so on.

Yep, if you're into diplo and civics mm, spiritual earns its keep. Not my *favourite* trait but I respect it. And if I'm not spiritual I find myself beelining radio to get Cristo Redentor, so I tend to be a spiritual-wannabe anyway.

I'm no spiritual expert (I've played it once as Asoka, but that's it), but I think the ability to switch between slavery and caste with impunity makes it a very good trait by itself.
Not mentioning all the possibilities explained by Joshua.

Anyway, didn't play the first segment yet. Will do in a couple hours, I think.

Ooh! This is a good idea. I will give it a go. I'm right in the middle of working out my Prince->Monarch issues, so this fits me fine. I can do really well on non-standard maps, but with a normal continents map, I often have to resort to slower and less convincing victory conditions (if any.)

Besides, I'm right in the middle of another game where I'm falling behind some of the other civs pre-astronomy. I share a nice continent with Sitting Bull, so all I need to do is eliminate him and I'm good for the win. The only problem is CGIII DI longbows are a complete nightmare, even with trebs and City Raider Maces. For some reason, I forget to follow my early rush instincts from the lower levels, and it always leads to this sort of hideous pre-gunpowder war in my Monarch games.

I'll put that game on hold for now, and see it plays out in this game.

to 1000 BC - Comments/criticism (of the constructive type ) welcome.

But first...

Whoa - I didn't mean to dump on spiritual - well not completely anyway. Maybe a better comment would be that it just doesn't suit my particular favourite playing style. While I wouldn't say I'm a dedicated warhead, I'm probably more comfortable with that than I am with being a wonder spamming, civic managing specialist. I'll admit that civics management is a weak point in my game, so I'm sure I'll learn something about that. I already have reading the above comments!

So with that...

Anyway more important than what JT said is after whipping just switch to the base labour civic(dont rem its name) so as to avoid slave revolts earlier in the capital

Al Shizuka, is it possible to make a WB save of the start? I see your save uses the Blue Marble mod which brings my laptop to a standstill. With a WB save, anyone can use any mod or not if they choose.

@ single malt (and others)

try this and let me know if it works.

I did not look at anything I swear - I saw nothing. I opened up wb clicked twice and got out.

Sorry - didn't realize it had to be zipped first

edit: Attachment deleted as requested

It should work, but only for epic speed. I am having a dig around to find out how to text edit the file to work for all speeds. On this one if you choose marathon you may have to play marathon turns with epic calendar time, ie. turn takes more years than it should.

Edit - I edited the text of the file to make Ramesses the only playable character so that the others are not revealed. You can remove your attached save it was playableciv or similar entry to the individual civs that was set to 0

edit2 - The save will work properly for all saves

Now to play it.

Looks like Single Malt did it already. I've added the zip to the OP.

Gmc, please delete your wb file as all civs are playable in that save, spoiling the opponents from the very beginning.

Sorry for the inconvenience, going finally to play it.

Single Malt said:

It should work, but only for epic speed. I am having a dig around to find out how to text edit the file to work for all speeds. On this one if you choose marathon you may have to play marathon turns with epic calendar time, ie. turn takes more years than it should.

Edit - I edited the text of the file to make Ramesses the only playable character so that the others are not revealed. You can remove your attached save it was playableciv or similar entry to the individual civs that was set to 0

Click to expand...

To make the game speed a menu choice, you need only change 2 lines in the WB file, set the Speed=0 and max turns=0. Then those numbers will be defined by the Scenario menu choices, and not hard-coded (if you try to play a Normal game at Epic, the game ends in 1910)

Signing in .