Skipped Prince

King Kalmah said:

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I fear Monarch difficulty due to the archery bonus and I like to play with barbs+Aggressive Civs to simulate a more realistic history .So I can imagine Monarch will be a challenge,but then I also fear the 20% bonus to teching that it also grants the AI....Mansa and Zara will be insane...

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I must admit I always play with normal barbs and normal AI (although sometimes with random personalities). Monarch with normal barbs is usually managable with warrior spawn busters for a long time. On immortal this gets tougher so you have to beeline strategic resource techs very early and grab archery if you have neither horse nor copper.

King Kalmah said:

Plus why doesn't the game grant the player a free worker or something?

I always thought on the hardest difficulty you should at least get a free worker...

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Eh... you can always steal one or two early They'd be free.

Darth Fred said:

I have a hunch I'm probably trying to do too much at once.

Science... no the economy... no my defense... no science...

Making a plan and sticking to it might do me a world of good.
F

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I understand that the amount of useful advice that can hit you on this forum can be confusing at times. Don't try to utilize all of them in one game

How about this for a very general early economy plan (as long as you don't have a stable economy you won't be able to last long in a war either):

1. Go worker first (maybe workboat on rare occasions) and research the techs you need to improve your food.
2. Research BW and AH for strat resources. If you see horse or copper, settle it. Always make sure that your cities (and strat resources) are connected. Build some mines for production.
3. Do something about your research potential. If you have floodplains / riverside grassland tiles, build cottages. If you don't (and have no early happy resources to balance it out) tech writing to run scientists. Settle cities that have food and will either be good unit producers or good commerce cities (or a combination of the two). Always take the time to build workers as well, so that you can improve city tiles quickly. (The goal is to only work improved tiles all the time.) Unless you play always war or some other advanced setting, open borders with the AIs and set up a trade route to them.
4. Getting to Alpha will enable you to backfill all early techs you might have skipped. With currency you can either go for an early rush or just expand peacefully quicker. It will allow you to build wealth and to sell old techs (or resources) to the AI which can finance your research. Tech or trade for Monarchy to improve your happy cap.

This strategy would work on immortal as well and it just about blows away the opposition on prince.

UnforcedError said:

1. Go worker first (maybe workboat on rare occasions) and research the techs you need to improve your food.
2. Research BW and AH for strat resources. If you see horse or copper, settle it. Always make sure that your cities (and strat resources) are connected. Build some mines for production.
3. Do something about your research potential. If you have floodplains / riverside grassland tiles, build cottages. If you don't (and have no early happy resources to balance it out) tech writing to run scientists. Settle cities that have food and will either be good unit producers or good commerce cities (or a combination of the two). Always take the time to build workers as well, so that you can improve city tiles quickly. (The goal is to only work improved tiles all the time.) Unless you play always war or some other advanced setting, open borders with the AIs and set up a trade route to them.
4. Getting to Alpha will enable you to backfill all early techs you might have skipped. With currency you can either go for an early rush or just expand peacefully quicker. It will allow you to build wealth and to sell old techs (or resources) to the AI which can finance your research. Tech or trade for Monarchy to improve your happy cap.

This strategy would work on immortal as well and it just about blows away the opposition on prince.

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Excellent advice. It is exactly this strategy that has moved me up from Noble to Monarch. Especially go for Writing early on and run Science Specialists to give an immediate science boost and also produce lots of Great Scientists.

Patricko said:

Excellent advice. It is exactly this strategy that has moved me up from Noble to Monarch. Especially go for Writing early on and run Science Specialists to give an immediate science boost and also produce lots of Great Scientists.

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You must be a real PHIL fan then

I really had to live though a few strikes during my first Monarch games to realize that teching pottery and writing early would actually be a great idea

Darth Fred said:

I have a hunch I'm probably trying to do too much at once.

Science... no the economy... no my defense... no science...

Making a plan and sticking to it might do me a world of good.
F

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Heh, Civ is one of those games where you have to do everything at once.

UnforcedError said:

You must be a real PHIL fan then

I really had to live though a few strikes during my first Monarch games to realize that teching pottery and writing early would actually be a great idea

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Speaking only from my side, but that trait is one I didn't play too much in vanilla and really discovered after I had experience with the game. Running scientists is one of the few ways to maintain a decent economy while expanding quick in the early game. Philosophical makes it pay off even more heavily.

I can't count the number of games I have rushed a worker tech or two, Bronze Working, then Pottery and Writing. It's pretty much my standard formula.

Antilogic said:

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Speaking only from my side, but that trait is one I didn't play too much in vanilla and really discovered after I had experience with the game. Running scientists is one of the few ways to maintain a decent economy while expanding quick in the early game. Philosophical makes it pay off even more heavily.
...

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Me neither. I didn't have the slightest idea how to utilize specialists or GP in my Noble (and even Monarch) days. I didn't know about bulbing preferences so I thought PHIL wasn't worth all that much. Then I read all the strategy articles here and noticed that some experienced players valued PHIL as high as FIN. Now on Immortal I begin to think it's even better then FIN for the early days. A good bulbing strategy and an early Academy can truly give you a head start.

(Btw for me it was the same with SPI. On Noble I thought: Hey, I only swap civics 5-6 times in the whole game, why would I want that? I really needed a deeper understanding of civic mechanics to fully appreciate it.)

UnforcedError said:

3. Do something about your research potential. If you have floodplains / riverside grassland tiles, build cottages.

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You lost me here. If I'm reading you right, this is to generate income and free up specialists for science.
???
F

Darth Fred said:

You lost me here. If I'm reading you right, this is to generate income and free up specialists for science.
???
F

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You focus your cottages and floodplains to cities that will be your money producing cities.

You use specialists in your food rich cities like Rice,corn and Clam,Crab cities grow faster.So you can whip a Library and then put in Scientists.

Make sure to seperate your cities goals/jobs...you can't have one city do everything...if you do that then you may fail at even noble...

Darth Fred said:

You lost me here. If I'm reading you right, this is to generate income and free up specialists for science.
???
F

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Cottages generate pure commerce which will then run through the slider and be converted into research, gold, culture, or espionage points, depending on how you set the slider on a given turn. The best (mid to late game) research city is actually a fully cottaged capital with all research multiplier buildings (the palace adding an extra +8 commerce + Bureaucracy adding +50% commerce), even if you're making heavy use of specialists otherwise.

King Kalmah said:

You focus your cottages and floodplains to cities that will be your money producing cities.

You use specialists in your food rich cities like Rice,corn and Clam,Crab cities grow faster.So you can whip a Library and then put in Scientists.

Make sure to seperate your cities goals/jobs...you can't have one city do everything...if you do that then you may fail at even noble...

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I'll have to play with this some time. As it stands, I use my flood plains for farms. The idea being more food= more specialists. More specialist = more money and science. So we'll see.

F

Darth Fred said:

.= more money and science.

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so does cottaged flood plains

Darth Fred said:

I'll have to play with this some time. As it stands, I use my flood plains for farms. The idea being more food= more specialists. More specialist = more money and science. So we'll see.

F

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Floodplain farms??? Only if the city is very food-poor. Otherwise, cottage. Floodplain farms are generally not great for a GP farm, as the would limit growth so your city would never reach its full potential anyway.

The cottage does tend to be more happiness/health-efficient, but I do use floodplain farms if there are good hills nearby for a super production city. Each floodplain farm can fully support a plains-hill or desert-hill miner, and grass-hill mines are still generating a surplus of food.

And that's before Biology.

Antilogic said:

The cottage does tend to be more happiness/health-efficient, but I do use floodplain farms if there are good hills nearby for a super production city. Each floodplain farm can fully support a plains-hill or desert-hill miner, and grass-hill mines are still generating a surplus of food.

And that's before Biology.

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That can be a good idea, but really depends on the overall makeup of the land in the BFC. If we talking 1 or 2 floodplains with very few additional riverside tiles then farming the FPs for a production city is feasible early. If you have more than 2 FPs, more riverside and food, then cottaging this city up is best early.

Late game, new/capture cities I will indeed convert the FPs to farms or more likely watermills under SP, which really rock. Hammers>cottages late game. Early game thos cottages can really pay off though.

UnforcedError said:

Floodplain farms??? Only if the city is very food-poor. Otherwise, cottage. Floodplain farms are generally not great for a GP farm, as the would limit growth so your city would never reach its full potential anyway.

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I don't usually hit the until a little later in the game. Though I'll keep that in mind too.
F

I've been stuck on prince for literally years. Prince to Monarch is described as the largest jump difficulty-wise, and noble to monarch would be even larger.

xcrissxcrossx said:

I've been stuck on prince for literally years. Prince to Monarch is described as the largest jump difficulty-wise, and noble to monarch would be even larger.

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On Monarch the AI and the barbs start with Archery and that's possibly the biggest difference between the two difficulty levels. It may take some time to get used to, but a few well-placed spawnbusting warriors will usually do the trick (a fully fortified warrior on a forested hill without promotions is fine against a barb archer on Monarch).

Tbh I think the largest jump difficulty-wise is the jump from Immortal to Deity That extra settler really makes an incredible difference.

Yep...IMM to Deity is the largest jump. Comparable to Noble to IMM jump. Nothing compares. Deity chews you up and spits you out. Monarch is really quite easy once you make a few adjustments.

lymond said:

That can be a good idea, but really depends on the overall makeup of the land in the BFC. If we talking 1 or 2 floodplains with very few additional riverside tiles then farming the FPs for a production city is feasible early. If you have more than 2 FPs, more riverside and food, then cottaging this city up is best early.

Late game, new/capture cities I will indeed convert the FPs to farms or more likely watermills under SP, which really rock. Hammers>cottages late game. Early game thos cottages can really pay off though.

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Of course, I didn't intend to imply that it was a 100% thing--it is dependent on the number of floodplains v. number of hills (which I thought was clear from my post), whether or not there are production resources in the BFC, etc.