Prince --> Monarch and harder

Hello

I´m having trouble managing Monarch and harder difficulties. But on Prince I win fairly easy. Is the step up to Monarch so hard?? I have been looking around here on the forum and i´ve read a bunch of tips, but how hard I try I´m only capable of winning about 10% of the games at Monarch. I always fall behind on techs, though building a lot of cottages and really trying to increase my sicence output. And when I try to expand my kingdom I always seem to get economy problems.... If I dont expand the AI eats me.. I have also tryed some warmongering but this only leads me further down the "anti-science" road, and the AI eat me again. So please give me some help!!

Is there any games (like here on the forum or so) where I can discuss each move and watch how other people play their games? I remember something like this when I played Civ3.

/Tarius (Soon to sell my civ4? )

When the game opens, quene a worker, and use him to chop out 1-2 additional workers, and use them to chop out at least 2 more settlers or a truck load of axeman if you see a neighbor. Then you should be able to have a large-enough kingdom to grow and dominate the world later.

work on early cottages, avoid founding early religions and wonders, and keep your military in the top 3 or 4.

I am also finding monarch a lot harder than prince. On prince, the ai starts out with a free scout. On monarch, they start out with a free archer, a free worker, and a free tech (agriculture)! The free worker really helps them get an early advantage. Add that to the increased research and hammer bonus and it is a challenge. You really have to play to your civ's strengths at this level, ie. pick a strategy based on using those strengths and the surrounding environment (terrain, neighbors, rescources etc.) instead of using one "stock" starting strategy.

Agree with the previous post. It is nearly impossible to win on Monarch without aggressive early expansion. I try to have 3-4 cities founded on quality sites by the beginning of the classical era. GW is a good leader to play at first as organized/financial makes it easier to expand while keeping up in tech. Catherine is great too as she starts with mining (get BW quicker) and you don't have to mess around with stonehenge.

Initial build for single player is Worker->Worker->Warrior->Settler while researching BW. Chop the 2nd worker and settler and get right to founding your second city and repeat the process while chopping stonehenge. Don't garrison your cities yet; post your early warriors on hills to intercept incoming barbs and act as sentries later. Research a wheel, pottery for cottages and 1-2 resource techs and writing (ideally animal husbandry, you may get lucky and land early horses for horse archers) then off to iron working.

Again you want 3 (maybe 4) solid cities and the immediate area scouted by the time iron working pops. If you do chances are you have iron nearby and have either identified a rival without iron or found a nice barb city ripe for the taking. Pop some swordsmen and go kick some butt while you beeline to alphabet. Ideally, if you lucked into early horses, back them up with a chariot or two for mopup and pillaging then mix in horseback riding (after you get alphabet and trade for archery) and add some horse archers to the party.

I know some people don't like warmongering and you don't have to warmonger throughout the game to win. But conducting one early military campaign can give you the edge you need to keep up with the AI.

Research Bronze Working -> (Fishing or Agriculture) -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing

Build a warrior, wait until city is size 2, then build a worker. By that time you should have BW already, so start the second worker, and chop a nearby forest.

Now set the city to produce a warrior, and cottage a couple of grassland tiles with your workers. If you have some floodplains around, even better - cottage a couple of them. Make sure the city works on these cottages alll the time.

Now set the city to produce a settler, and chop two forests with your workers.

Send the settler and a warrior to found a new city, meanwhile one of the workers chops down the third worker, and the other, starts improving the food resource, then build the road to connect two cities. (On a coastal start with seafood aroud, you may chop rush a work boat instead).

By that time you should get Writing already, so start the library in the capital. Chop two or three forests for it, if you are not running out of forests. You may want to keep some 2 or 4 forests inside the fat cross, but you can chop down the forests right outside. If you don't have enough forests, mine a hill or two.

Once the city reaches the size 5 (or 4 in the case of floodplains), assign a couple of scientists to your library. Make sure the rest of the pop is working on cottages and food resource.

Now you may build (chop rush) more units/ workers/ settlers/ Stonehenge etc, research the rest of worker techs and the Alphabet for tech trading. Improve the land around your cities, do not forget about more cottages, etc.

Once your capital produces a Great Scientist, build the Academy, and remove scientist specialists to let the city grow. You now have at least two grown up cottages with good commerce, library and academy for +75% science bonus, 3 or 4 cities, and the science bar at 80-90%.

Tarius said:

Hello

If I dont expand the AI eats me..

/Tarius (Soon to sell my civ4? )

Click to expand...

One way to get used to Monarch level is to play on archipelago maps, with a lot of water => the AI will not grow too fast. For your first games, you should not expand too much if you want to keep a good science rate.

Prince to Monarch can be a tough step up.
You have to take much more care of your cities, a lot more micro-management with your citizens is important.

Early cottages are vital, keep a close eye on what tiles your citizens are working in each city.
Specialising your cities is also much more important at Monarch.

Basically, you need to micro-manage more and concentrate harder on every decision you make.

Keep a close watch on happiness in your core cities and learn to use the whip, but try not to use the whip in your capital unless absolutely necessary. The capital will have too many valuable tiles that need be worked, you don't want to lose citizens from those tiles unless you really have to.

Oh, and make sure your miliatary is strong, even if you don't plan to go to war anytime soon.

the diplomacy has to be a lot tighter too. Pick a few allies and stick with them, thick and thin. Lots and lots of tech trading, especially with your allies. Beelining is more important too, so you have techs to trade around. 've gotten stuck a few times behind _everyone_ ... and noone wants to hand out techs for free. Most of my monarch games I end up running around 30% science for a while during my early wars of expansion, so figuring out what your allies are researching and then picking something else is necessary.

Tarius said:

Hello

I´m having trouble managing Monarch and harder difficulties. But on Prince I win fairly easy. Is the step up to Monarch so hard?? I have been looking around here on the forum and i´ve read a bunch of tips, but how hard I try I´m only capable of winning about 10% of the games at Monarch. I always fall behind on techs, though building a lot of cottages and really trying to increase my sicence output. And when I try to expand my kingdom I always seem to get economy problems.... If I dont expand the AI eats me.. I have also tryed some warmongering but this only leads me further down the "anti-science" road, and the AI eat me again. So please give me some help!!

Is there any games (like here on the forum or so) where I can discuss each move and watch how other people play their games? I remember something like this when I played Civ3.

/Tarius (Soon to sell my civ4? )

Click to expand...

There are many Succession Games on this forum that go turn-by-turn on various difficulty levels. The best way to learn all the tricks of the trade... look in the Civ4 Stories & Tales section.

MetHimPikeHoses said:

There are many Succession Games on this forum that go turn-by-turn on various difficulty levels. The best way to learn all the tricks of the trade... look in the Civ4 Stories & Tales section.

Click to expand...

Or better yet to play in them. Its much easier to play 10 turns at a difficulty a step above what you can usually handle than it is a whole game. Plus the nature of them forces you to focus more on each turn you take. All in all a great way to improve your game.

Well, I've just finished my 2nd ever game on Monarch level. The first one was last month's GOTM where I got trounced before my little guys had even figured out which end of the pointy stick to use

And, ok I didn't win, but in the end I was only 10 turns away from a space victory. Not too bad considering I lost to Portugal who started the game on the second largest continent, and on their own! (even then they didn't manage to grab all of it!). Whereas I walked out of my hut to find Ghengis Khan and a horde of Vikings as my neighbours! Frankly I'm quite happy I managed to survive at all (aaah religion, what a wonderful thing )

Even if I had of won, it was only a space victory and it wouldn't disguise the fact I was only mid-table. I didn't hold out much hope of a win anyway, and I nearly gave up around 1700 when it was pretty clear I was the underdog. But I'm glad I persevered because it made for one of the most exciting end-games, and I learnt a lot about tactics for the space race. Things like grabbing all the useful wonders & completely changing all your terrain improvements just to squeeze every last hammer out of your land. In fact, if I'd been wise to this last tactic a bit earlier I might just have won

Anyway, it's been interesting to read this thread so far, and I've definitely learnt that I need to be a lot more aggressive a lot earlier on if I want to get a good base to build from, so I'm gonna pick my leader traits carefully for the next game and my neighbours better watch out!

Civ out!

I really need to finish a game ackkk. I just played my first game on prince standard map with 7 civs with roaming barbs with the Romans. Thinking of moving up to monarch next. Its frustrating when you find cities that the land is so barren and bare you cant do much with. Its often hard to know when to expand past the 4th city at times due to so many building distractions. I often find 4 good city locations and find the 5-8 city come later in game are built on poor land and is normally used to grab resources or stop the enemy building cities. This is about the fourth game i have played to date.

Am i right in thinking you cant get free workers/ settlers on prince or above from huts?

I do miss my civ 3 trick where if you didnt build a military unit at start on any setting you could often fluke a free settler or free city on Emperor once you had built your first city.

I think i do need to finish a game at some point but its a learning curve.
Its getting past the point where you need to leave your island that im probably getting somewhat lost on. i remember the civ 3 days where you needed hundreds of units just to secure a continent city in case of a war.

I thought monarch to emperor is a bigger jump? Since emperor is the first of the 'hard' difficulties. I find you have to harass v. early in emporer compared with monarch where you can leave your neighbors alone for a bit if you wanted to.

Gumbolt said:

Am i right in thinking you cant get free workers/ settlers on prince or above from huts?

Click to expand...

Think you're right here. It is defined in the Civ4HandicapInfo.xml file iirc.

Oooh is that listed anywhere on forum?? I saw a list of the science you could get in another post. I probably wont find many huts come the harder levels anyway if they have more scouts. Im assuming the AI will know exactly where the huts are if they know where the units in city are?

Gum

My first game (only so far) on Monarch was very odd. I had been able to win fairly easily on Prince and when I moved to Monarch I completely obliterated the opposition.

I did have quite a lot of luck. No iron to start with but a very handy elephant. Got beaten to the pyramids by France, but happily they were right next to me. A beeline to construction and my elephants/catapults soon acquired me the pyramids and some very useful French cities. All but one in fact, which was oddly on the other side of the continent. Oh well, they gave me some useful cash in return for peace.

I had been sticking with no religion but wishing I could get the benefits of a religion without the diplomatic penalties. Happily everyone else in the world converted to Buddhism so not only could I pick up the benefits of a religion, but I got large diplomatic bonuses for doing so!

Once I got maceman I decided I wanted some more land and Cyrus had some pretty tempting cities. Just as I had finished building up my forces and was about to declare war, he decided to declare war on me thus saving me some diplomatic penalties. Happily he also queued up stacks of units for me to catapult and crush. He had a partiular fascination with mounted units so my nicely promoted elepants were happy to take some more free promotions. My newly researched macemen picked up the slack.

Finally later in the game I had researched far enough to be able to see oil. Disappointingly there was only 1 source of oil available on the continent (playing in terra) which Ghengis had but couldn't see yet. I built up my cavalry and he was just as kind as Cyrus because he declared war on me just as I finished building up my troops (my switching to free religion probably tipped the scales). A few turns later and I was the proud owner of the only oil on the continent.

Once I got tanks I could have annihilated all opposition but I was so far ahead by that time that I felt too lazy so simply went for an early space race victory.

I have the feeling my next Monarch game probably won't be quite so easy.

Well, I am now consistently winning on Monarch dificulty no matter what start I got. I mean even on poor shafled start I still manage to win. Even if there no tree around to cut, even if capital does not have mach of good titles. ( I useally playing continents with everything else rundom.)

On monarch you need to start to pay attention to everything.
Exploring on start is important. You need to meat your neybors, find future good city cites and pop this huts. ( they still give you gold, technologies, free units and expirience).

Town development. In many cases first worker is a good idea.

Generally improve best tie + chop + chop let you get this second setler faster and get this jucy city side faster. Well if you have trees, otherwize still improve more ties.

Fog busting. If town still does not have happines problem it is better to have this military unit out on the hill busting fog then sit in a town. in My latest game I probably got low sea level, dry and hot climate. (huge continents with desert all around) and I got stuck in corner with a only desert a long way around me, darn, neglet for busting for a second and lo and behold as 10 barbarians ravage you land (I am not joking, I count. In a space of a few turns 6 acrchers and 4 warrior visit me. The darn pillage everything the can befor got beaten or try to take city.

Next, research. Research should be directed. You can not outresearch ai any longer. So, if you can not use agricalure right now, do not research it.
research only what will be usefull now, absolutly needed.

Next tech trade. Alphavit is vital if you are not alone. Researching it will let you get a lot of trades and cut your research problems. Avoide to trade alphavit if you can, but do trade if it is the only think AI does not know.
Look for tech trade opportunities often.

City specialisation. Again, build only what city need or what is needed for your plan for this city. If city design to crack trops, only this city need baracks, may be heroic epic and only absolutly nessesary other buildings.
GP farm - city with good food ties and I tend to use one of border ones, as cottages tend to get pillaget a lot of times.
Capital, it is a good idea to make your capital a commerce/production center. It is useally deep in your land and cottages have time to grow and does have a lot of good ties. In addition burocracy is a good civic.

GP, learn to use them well. Discovering new technologies most often the best use for them. AI use them to discover COL, Civil service, Theology, Philosofy.

Later game religion is a good way to use early prophet. Some tech you can get from GP may be useless to you, but could be a greate trade matherial. So, some 800 beackers tech can bring you 1300 in trades.

Diplomacy is a powerfull tool all the game. Later in game a technology can buy you a war, stopping 2 rivals making space ship. Resource trade.

Do concider selling your excess resources for money if you can not get anythign else usefull. Generally one of reason why I want to get best resources sites is because trade one resource away and city payes for itself allready.

And the most important. Allways have a plan in all areas of you civilisation.

I'm gonna need more training on that difficulty level without the temptation of reload before advancing to Emperor level.

benjai said:

I thought monarch to emperor is a bigger jump? Since emperor is the first of the 'hard' difficulties. I find you have to harass v. early in emporer compared with monarch where you can leave your neighbors alone for a bit if you wanted to.

Click to expand...

I agree that Monarch to Emperor is a bigger jump, but the thread is specifically about the jump from Prince to Monarch.
I think we all need a helping hand moving up a level.

I found Emperor so difficult in my first 2 or 3 games that I aborted early each time knowing that I'd already made too many wrong decisions. Since then I've found Emperor a lot easier by learning from my mistakes and have now won a few domination victories, (note to self: must try that "space race" thing some day )

I've now played 2 games at Immortal and have again aborted quite early, so hopefully I'm following the previous pattern and will soon get the hang of it.

Every time you step up a level you find that some of your strategies that worked before are no longer good enough.

Reading these forums can be a real eye opener when you see what other players are capable of. Learning from better players is the best way to improve your own game.
So if anybody needs tips on how to win at immortal then don't ask me, because at the moment I haven't got a clue!

But I will beat it soon.