Monarch: Middle Ages strategy

So, I'm playing my first Monarch game, I'm into the 11th century leading my continent, but behind in technology and power from the Civs across the ocean.

As I see ti there are three stragies I can go for:

1 Dominate my continent
a) Wipe out the other Civs
b) Then race to catch up science

2 Concentrate on trade and economy

3 Gain a foothold in distant lands, and take on the stronger Civs

Early game stages are posted here

From other thread:

(cabert])

1) Read a few Sun-Tzu's lines! You know nothing about your continent/your opponent(s)! Intelligence is the only (correct) way
- to choose a target : was germany the best one to pick? why?
- to adopt a strategy : does germany have metals? where? horses? where? wonders? where?
- to know when to sue for peace = seeing you can't finish him off with the troops you have and reinforcements aren't ready yet/need 10+ turns to come.

How do you decide without any exploration! If you had no open borders (quite usual), you still can send a scout/a chariot/ a stack into enemy territory to learn those things. Better to at least explore your continent as much as possible while building up the army. You only know one city of the mongols too You won't see the keshiks coming. It's a serious warning here! Mongols will flood you with keshiks at some point. ANd if i read well the map, this point may be very close.
Without map intelligence, you'll need to get informations through the info screens and diplomacy. When you sued for peace with Freddy, did you check how much cities he had? You see a list of the cities in the dialog. Add one (the capitol he can't trade) and you at least know how many cities you have to take (razing is an option now! don't burden yourself with far away lowly cities).

2) how are you doing techwise? do you have CoL? I assume yes, since you were going to build courthouses. Do you know alphabet? Do you know currency? If you know none of those 2, you can't extort anything

If you're going to take the cities 2 by 2, you may as well get some free money to feed your research, or some free techs.

cabert said:

1) Read a few Sun-Tzu's lines! You know nothing about your continent/your opponent(s)! Intelligence is the only (correct) way
- to choose a target : was germany the best one to pick? why?
- to adopt a strategy : does germany have metals? where? horses? where? wonders? where?
- to know when to sue for peace = seeing you can't finish him off with the troops you have and reinforcements aren't ready yet/need 10+ turns to come.

Click to expand...

Good points, however I generally assume I don't have time to spend scouting out opponents or building scout units.
I chose germany as at the time they wee the only Civs borders I could see.

In retrospect I discovered a nearby Roman city with horses (which I've duly taken)

cabert said:

You only know one city of the mongols too You won't see the keshiks coming. It's a serious warning here! Mongols will flood you with keshiks at some point. ANd if i read well the map, this point may be very close.
Without map intelligence, you'll need to get informations through the info screens and diplomacy. When you sued for peace with Freddy, did you check how much cities he had? You see a list of the cities in the dialog. Add one (the capitol he can't trade) and you at least know how many cities you have to take (razing is an option now! don't burden yourself with far away lowly cities).

Click to expand...

Again, good point. Using relative points as I guide I decided to make the Mongols my friends; trading frequently with them I have no negative diplomacy with them, and I'm working on converting them to the same religion with missionaries.

cabert said:

2) how are you doing techwise? do you have CoL? I assume yes, since you were going to build courthouses. Do you know alphabet? Do you know currency? If you know none of those 2, you can't extort anything

If you're going to take the cities 2 by 2, you may as well get some free money to feed your research, or some free techs.

Click to expand...

After finishing the war with the Germans in 500AD I had a brief war with Rome taking their two closest cities.

Unfortantely Rome itself was too heavily guarded and I didn't have the right units to take on their Legionairres, or whatever they call them in this version of Civ.

I'm significantly behind the newly discovered and distant Spanish and Americans in Technology, but I'm only second in points.

It's now c.1100AD.

points don't matter much now
they may matter in 2040

you didn't answer to the specific tech questions:
alphabet? (no, AFAIK)
CoL? (yes, afaik)
currency? (no, AFAIK)

I would hurry to alphabet, to make up some of the tech gap.
Then to construction.

About praetorians (rome's UU), the right unit against them is the axeman. 2 axeman for 1 praetorian is enough most of the time (inside a city, since they don't have CG promotions). If you don't want to face too much of those, find the iron and pillage it (even to the cost of 3 axemen, it's well used)!
Rome usually has some good wonders (strange AI personality, not using the UU much) that you could use, but the cultural defense will require cats.

Do you have open borders with anyone? do you even know writing?

cabert said:

points don't matter much now
they may matter in 2040

you didn't answer to the specific tech questions:
alphabet? (no, AFAIK)
CoL? (yes, afaik)
currency? (no, AFAIK)
..
Do you have open borders with anyone? do you even know writing?

Click to expand...

I'll post a new screenshot later if I can to update.

Yes to all techs, I'm running a Hereditary rule, Bureaucratic, Organised Religion state.

When you sued for peace, you couldn't extort any techs
Meaning he is still strong (speaking of Freddy).

You'll have to kill him sooner or later, so try to see into his territory to prepare your next war + build units (theocracy is better for this than org rel).

Option 1 (dominate the continent) is best since you already started 2 wars. Diplomacy won't save you at this point = building units (cats!) en masse, scouting everything you can, courthousing, marketing what needs to be is necessary though. 2/3 cities building alternatively units for 10 turns can churn out a good deal. The whip is your friend (and unpromoted cats bombard and do the collateral damage you need, no need to focus on the barracked cities).

I'm afraid I went for option 2; backed off the offensive, signed defensive pacts with Kublai.

I'm second place in the world, nearly 1800, behind in Technology, not sure how far.

I'm going to 'annex' what's left of Germany and Rome shortly.

I'm developing tech every four rounds, but the Americans always seem to have eight techs they won't trade.

Isabella is in fourth place and threatening to start a war I don't think I want.


Is it worth conquering the mongols also? They're ahead on the graphs but behind on points.

If you are up against FDR then he will stay in the lead. He is a cottage champion from what I know from my games. Also a military hoarder (stuffing his cities full with +12 units) so don't even think about attacking him (I made that mistake too). Only way to gain on him is getting more land and more research that way. Take over Germany and Rome quickly and then start working on your diplomacy and your power rating (more units to avoid war).

Perhaps getting Isabella to go to war with him would slow things up.

How hard is it to instigate that kind of thing?

Getting the AIs to fight amongst themselves is often a good idea. I often try this in order to distract my biggest competitors from the space race and/or attacking me.

If Isabella is friendly with you and has a different religion than FDR then there's at least a chance she'll consider attacking him. Unlike some civs, she can sometimes be convinced to fight even if the odds are against her. You'll probably have to give her some techs, but if she isn't one of the civs seriously pushing you for victory then that's not really a big deal.

She hates me - demanded tech a few rounds back.

Washington refuses to trade unless he is suggesting it, although I think he's willing to trade some Techs.

Might be easier to befriend, and convince him to attack Isabella. He's top dog at the moment though, so I don't want to shower him with gifts...

Spoke to soon, the Spanish landed on my shores in 1812.

Not in great numbers, luckily.


Any tips on naval warfare? I'm building ironclads as fast as I can to sink her galleon/frigate combos.

On monarchy i find if you have the tech lead anyone pleased with you will normally enter a war with you for 1-2 techs. Let the AI fight eachother and use up their troops. While they are distracted attack from the rear on your friend. Lets be honest sooner or later you will need to invade them for a domination victory.

Being behind on power is a learning curve.You really do have to monitor troop levels on demographics and if you start to fall behind start pumping out a few units and expand faster. More cities = more unit producing cities.

Its about 1700ad ish on my current game and im 200k ahead on troops. Infantry soon to arrive and a healthy tech lead.

expand, cottage spam, Build units, attack neighbours, return to expand from captured cities and start the cycle again rebuilding lost units. Those cottages and troops do build up over time and so does your science base.

Would be good to see a saved game

I haven't had a tech lead for a long time; its now 1888 and the Yanks are building space suttle components while I'm at war.

Don't think I've got a chance now.

<edit>
I'm ahead on points now, how can I sabotage the Americans space program? Is a diplo victory possible?

Lost 1952. Washington wins space race

Wasn't far from a diplo victory bt couldnt get isabella or kublai to vote for me despite good relations.
5992 points

should have gone option 1