Just moved up to monarch, need some advice

[citizen001]

hi, i recently moved up to monarch difficulty and am playing a game on tiny pangea with carthage. i'm going better than i thought i would but starting to fall behind in tech and finances which didn't happen much in regent. any advice? save game is below thanks.

[predesad]

busy weekend right now, but if i have time to play my PBEM turns i will look at this also, but i am sure someone else will offer advice soon too

[citizen001]

Let's hope so.

[Tatran]

Originally Posted by citizen001

i'm going better than i thought

Don't be too happy.You are a lot of techs behind.
I would go for Military Tradition and clean the map.
You are lucky Hammurabi doesn't have horses,but
expect riflemen very soon.

[predesad]

First of all, the one good thing I noticed was you had 33 workers and completely worked tiles, but you could use some irrigation in a few places because a lot of cities are pretty small and are simply not growing, in republic especially there is a big difference in having size one cities and size two cities in terms of units support if nothing else.

You have built, are building some useless improvements, a lot of granaries and temples which are not needed. try switching from temples to library, they give more culture than a temple, boost your science, and you DO NOT have a happiness problem, but we will get to that later.

A few cases I wanted to point out:

some cites just 4-5 tiles away from your capitol have courthouses built, i am unsure because of the map size, but i dont think these are needed

cirta: building a temple, but it can only grow to size 4 and won't have unhappy citizens, a harbor instead would let the city grow, it could use a courthouse because it is pretty corrupt

texcoco: building a granary, it is also very corrupt, it will grow in 3 turns and then will have no excess food, thus no growth, what good will the granary be?

hippo: has 8 happy & 4 unhappy citizens, yet is building a cathedral (which will be necessary after som eof my suggested changes, but currently is not) perhaps you wanted that culture, it also has a coloseum, but i was unsure why ??

russadin: (mispelled maybe) will build a granry in 11 turns, yet it has zero growth, what's the granary going to do?

sulcan: (also might have mispelled) building a granary, but it is maxed out at size 6 and needs an aqueduct

I would suggest building libraries and marketplaces instead of the temples you are building, libraires actually have more culture. I would also suggest to pay more attention to what each and every individual city needs in the way of improvements, you are paying maintenance on every improvement so make each one count. Build what each particular city needs and build things which will providew the best immediate benefit, this has the appearance of temple / granaries just being a favorite build as so many corrupt cities are building one or the other

Major Economic Problem:

you DO NOT have a happiness problem, despite one city being in civil disorder. currently you are running 20% science (49 gold, theology 9 turns) and 30% luxury (66) you are paying 68 in maintenance and 62 for units, luxury costs as much as both of those, that is a problem. If 30% was truly needed I would suggest changing governments to monarchy so you can use MPs to cut down on the happiness.

But, I moved slider to 20%, now paying out 37 in luxury rate. to keep some cities from going into disorder I used specialists: lol was already in disorder and needed a specialists (tax colector) it was unaffected by lux rate change, nora needed a specialist (tax colector) zama needed a specialist (tax collector) Those two cities are corrupt, they are giving you one shield and 1 gold, by using the specialist I actually increased productivity in those cities.

Wait, not through yet, moved slider to 10%, now paying only 18 to luxuries. to keep cities form going into disorder I had to also make the following changes: lol the tax collector now had to become an entertainer, technotitlan tax collector (which was there from uploaded save) had to be converted to entertainer. Hippo, which I mentioned earlier, now has a happiness problem and needs its cathedral, one citizen was converted to a tax collector with no affect on growth and a reduction of one turn in build time for cathedral.

This led to a surplus of 81 gold, I think, up from 17. I moved science to 40%, theology now in 4 turns with a surplus of 23 gold.

Basically, do not use lux slider to benefit a few corrupt cities, the specialists can actually make them more productive and irrigating grassland in their territory can let you run more specialists and maintain growth. Consider the drop from 30% to 10% affected only 5 of about 40 cities and all those cities were corrupt.

You have been at war with the Aztecs and currently are stronger than they are. I believe yuo should have went for one of theri luxuries right away during the war, the ivory at Teohuacan or dyes at Tlacopan, perhaps you should consider that now.

That is all my input for now, perhaps someone else will come along and offer more advice. I know some of my comments were directed more towards things which cannot be fixed, such as the improvments being built, and won't help you in this particular game, but hopefully you will be more choosy about builds next monarchy game.

[SJ Frank]

Alright Citizen, you're guilty of the following:

- Building two of the most useless ancient wonders in the game
- Not having a Forbidden Palace by 1000AD
- Not having a single marketplace, dispite being in Republic.
- Culture rushing your opponent, dispite culture victory being turned off (isn't it easier to just conquer them, remember that settlers cost population as well as production, and population actually is more valuable than production)
- Not making use of every single tile near the capital, resulting in loss of thousands of prime, un-corrupted gold and production over the thousands of years
- Not irrigating the green once leaving Despotism.
- Neglecting your un-corrupted core cities in favor of the corrupted fringe cities. Not a single worker in sight within a thousand miles of Carthrage.
- Letting the Babylonians running away with the game. At some point, you must have realized that they are far ahead of everybody else, and that they are the only threat to you in this game. At that point, you should have dropped everything else, and turn everybody against Babylon (while there was still somebody else in the game ).

In all though, this is still a very winnable game. Babylon has no horse! If you could get to cavs before they reach inf, you can win this game right then. Otherwise you need to get to infrantry and artillery before they launch (eliminate the Aztecs before UN), still very feasible. In either cases, remember that the key to victory will be the bombardment units.

[citizen001]

Thank you both for your input. now somethings have been made clearer. i appreciate what you have done. but just a few things:

@SJ Frank,
- i conquered the most useless wonder in the game the hanging gardens and built the other one as a mistake. i know i shouldn't have built the oracle.
- i didn't know you needed the FP that quickly, i'll keep it in mind for my future games. i didn't want to build it because my expansion phase was not complete yet. is that a valid reason for not building it early?
- the culture rushing was to gain more territory and prevent flips. the conquering was harder as i had undefended cities bordering aztec territory so if i warred they would take my cities faster.
- my capital was a settler factory, is that a good choice? or should i use it to build marketplaces, military etc?
- i generally mine green and irrigate brown, but i might change with what you wrote on food.

once again i thank you both for your tips and analysis.

[predesad]

mine green irrigate brown is fine, but once you are out of despotism some of those green mines need to be replaced with irrigation, hopefully what you do is mine enough squares while in despotism for your citizens to work, then later when you are in another gov't you irrigate other squares, but sometimes to get the best squares (by river, or bonus grass) you have to rework already mined grass. if you have the choice between mining a grass (no BG) or irrigating plains and either both of them or none of them are beside a river then irrigate the plains first (in the beginning of the game)

capitol is a good choice for settler factory, if it has the most food, but at some point you hand off settlers to other cities to develop the capitol if there is still that much room for expansion or if you are building settlers to replace enemy cities which have been razed.

build FP as soon as reasonably possible