[BTS] Monarch Rant (again XD)

[Marcvs Avrelivs]

As far as I remember, this should be the 4th in a series of posts (pleas?) for help on Monarch Alright, I *think* I am progressing through my monarch games after a couple of weeks of resets, rage-quits and what-nots However, I still can not manage a win; I usually quit as soon as I think I have no overall advantage (e.g decent score lead, etc.)

So, a few questions:

- is it normal to be out-teched by the AI (as in, all of them, not just Mansa or any other heavy techer) in the 1-500 AD years?
- how do you keep up in military with the AI? I usually find myself weaker by the time I enter the timeframe mentioned above
-what tech path would you recommend for a renaissance cuir spam? And how do you achieve such early domination win dates?

Finally, attached is a save from my latest game; Louis XIV of France. Please comment (no flames though ) and rectify whatever 'noobish' mistake you might see

Thanks once more!
Marcvs Avrelivs

[mtr12]

Why do 3 cities have Walls? Unless you're near someone like Shaka or Monty, there's not much point.

You have 9 workers for 9 cities, a bit more would be nice (possibly instead of the Walls?), but given that you have a lot of cities, it's excusable.

I have no idea how you are so far behind in tech. You probably didn't trade enough, and worked poor tiles. During the later BC's, you probably built too many Settlers and only started rushing Workers later.

You are an IND leader who can get Stone in time for the Pyramids. Your Capital has decent production. SSE-->Cuirs should be a fairly easy game here, especially on Monarch.

There's a really good city site southeast of the Capital (2 Fish, 1 Rice) that could be your Globe City. With Police State and Forges, you can 2-pop whip Cuirs, and with that city your empire could get pretty beastly. But you overlooked it.



If you want to practice a Cuirs game, play the current Pick Your Leader game. All the Emperor and Immortal players succeeded with Cuirs Rushing and achieved early domination wins. See if you can do the same on Monarch.

[Marcvs Avrelivs]

Originally Posted by mtr12

Why do 3 cities have Walls? Unless you're near someone like Shaka or Monty, there's not much point.

Zara declared war on me some years back and I told myself to prepare if it comes again However, I don't know all of the AI personalities so I take it Zara is one of those peacemongers?

Originally Posted by mtr12

You have 9 workers for 9 cities, a bit more would be nice (possibly instead of the Walls?), but given that you have a lot of cities, it's excusable.

We can do that

Originally Posted by mtr12

I have no idea how you are so far behind in tech. You probably didn't trade enough, and worked poor tiles. During the later BC's, you probably built too many Settlers and only started rushing Workers later.

I *think* it had something to do with me researching alphabet quite late, with most of the AI having it... Any tips on how to get it early on and what the target date usually is?

Originally Posted by mtr12

You are an IND leader who can get Stone in time for the Pyramids. Your Capital has decent production. SSE-->Cuirs should be a fairly easy game here, especially on Monarch.

Saladin beat me to the mids Next time, I'll aim for it early on then

[barbertje]

You need to grow your cities more. You have a lot of happiness left, because there are 2 resources you can trade for, and you can switch to hereditary rule.
The capital would get the next GP out faster, if you worked an elephant and the copper, instead of 2 scientists until the national epic is done, and it'll grow faster too.
Growing the population is more important than getting courthouses ASAP.

without the mids I would have cottaged the capitol. It doesn't have enough food for a decent GP farm.

On monarch, I would research alphabet, right after writing.

Your tech path was AH, mining, BW, hunting (ok so far),
writing (I'd probably research pottery first on this level for the discount on writing)
mysticism, polytheism, priesthood (now 1325 BC, a bit late for the oracle),
you'd better have done alpha first.
IW (could have traded for it with alpha), masonry, pottery, alphabet. (365 BC)
It's now so late, you could have researched aesthetics, and traded it for alphabet.

BTW, Mansa is not a good war target before construction.

[mtr12]

I *think* it had something to do with me researching alphabet quite late, with most of the AI having it... Any tips on how to get it early on and what the target date usually is?

Just get it after all your improvement techs are done. If you're on Immortal (my current level) or Deity, get Aesthetics instead and trade for it.

[Archon_Wing]

Food is life; without it you cannot work the commerce and production tiles. Several of your cities have no food resource at all, and are becoming a strain on your economy because they are taking a long time to become productive. Meanwhile, there are cities with food that could be settled.

Best bet is civil service ---> mass irrigation

[Bei1052]

Okay.

1.) For 500 AD, your cities are incredibly small. A big reason for that is that many of your cities lack for food.

2.) Non-riverside cottages really aren't that great. If you're going to build cottages, try to build them next to a riverside (2C vs. 1C).

3.) Build more workers.

4.) Trade away some of your excess resources for the extra gold/diplo/happiness bonus. For example, you can trade Saladin bronze for wine. Considering he already has iron, it's no harm/no foul. You can also trade Zara elephants for 5 gpt. Considering you have extra elephants in your borders, it's worth trading it to him.

5.) I was thinking you were woefully behind in tech. You're not that far behind at all. The biggest problem you're going to have is that you've kind of made it unecessarily hard on yourself. Mansa is generally a good trading partner, but he won't trade you because he's your worst enemy due to you declaring on him and making a demand. Don't do that unless you have a specific reason to.

6.) Ftr, your game is very winnable.

Edit:

7.) You have HR and OR. Consider switching civics to both and changing into Confucianism.

[Marcvs Avrelivs]

Instead of my habit of quitting and starting a new game, I've decided to continue on and see if I can win this one.

6.) Ftr, your game is very winnable.

That meant a lot to me

Alright, so, played for several turns after the first save. Followed most (if not all, although I think I got a lot of them covered) of your advice. I took CS and went irrigating, then got paper and traded it round, didn't get much though (Zara had it, but he preferred to hold on to it )

Luckily, I had a GScientist come out so I used him to bulb Education which I then traded round to fill the techs I missed (yeah, I know, it is critical for liberalism so if you see anything wrong with that move, feel free to yell at me )

So, my position by 1050 AD is in the save: feel free to comment on how I did Can't wait to hear from you guys all the other things I could've done

Edit: another question; would you recommend me to go cuir spamming or do you guys think knights would suffice?

[Tempesta13]

The unimproved riverside grassland (3 of them) in your Bureaucracy capital's BRC needed cottages 1500 years ago. Also noticed you had some workshops which are useless at this part of the game but have hills left unimproved...

I took a look and automated all governers, ran a couple extra scientists in capital to get a GP. Used for a GA and built Confucian temples and monasteries in every city then a forge. I whipped heavily - also getting 6 universities and then Oxford (during GA) in capital. Also rearranged ivory trades to get more gpt. Also deleted some troops.

Lost lib to Zara but in about 1350 AD I had +4 hammers + forge everywhere, most cities on wealth except capital on Taj, about 450 bpt (with a 50 gold loss but sustained with trades). 3 turns from Gunpowder (and Cuirs) and no one is near Rifling. Taj Mahal is ~15 turns out and should get it - Zara didn't lib Nationalism.

I also mined all your hills that were unimproved then automated all workers. Since the land is pretty well farmed you can probably come up with 20 Cuirs really fast with hammers and whipping. I'd go for Mansa first since Zara is friendly and Mansa is just as close and has good land to take.

Replaying this game with earlier cottages in the capital, less unnecessary troops (and maintenance) and you easily win lib and your Cuirs army is ready ~100 years earlier.

[Marcvs Avrelivs]

Oh wow, you don't know how lucky that save is, Tempesta13

Spoiler:

Played several turns without much going on; upgraded a few units into cuirs while cranking more out along with a couple of musketeers for support (hm, at least they have their uses ) Huayna and Wang Kon were locked into a vicious war: Wang Kon lost Seoul several turns after the save, which had the AP in it.

Luck had it that the AP resolution Huayna picked was the one in which we decide who will be the Confucian pope, of course, he and I were the two candidates.... The turn after that, I was surprised to see this:

That was totally unexpected

Ah well, will continue on to see how the game turns out if that didn't happen and if the cuir spam proceeds.

Thanks once more guys

[mtr12]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Food is life; without it you cannot work the commerce and production tiles. Several of your cities have no food resource at all, and are becoming a strain on your economy because they are taking a long time to become productive. Meanwhile, there are cities with food that could be settled.

Best bet is civil service ---> mass irrigation

Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, you missed a great site with 3 Food resources. That site, given that you had the Pyramids, could have carried you to an easy win.

[vicawoo]

Tile micro:

Paris: switch from scientist specialists to copper/elephant. You can run more specialists once you complete national epic.

Lyons switch to stone/mine for one turn to complete worker in 1. Then run cottages.

Marseilles switch from plains forested hill to dye.

Niani switch from forested grassland to grassland mine

Orleans: switch from plains forest to riverside cottage, switch from plains mine to non-riverside cottage

Rheims: if you want a forge first, switch from plains mine to floodplain farm

Worker micro:

Cancel all their orders, except the bananas and roading the plantation. Forget the jungle hills for now and non-riverside cottages in cities that have better tiles to work. You want to cottage the floodplains, riverside tiles, farm agincourt, maybe chop. Lyons wants another grassland cottage to grow on.


Other:

Marseilles wants to connect the dye soon, so you can trade to zara for 5 gpt.

Far cities want courthouses, not as important for close ones.

Go 100% for metal casting, switch production to mass build forges (because you're industrious). Civil service next.

Send spy towards zara, shift espionage, so later you can steal gold from him.

[Zx Zero Zx]

Build more units and attack more people. It is how you win on all difficulties, just as you go up higher it's all about how quickly you do it.

[Marcvs Avrelivs]

Originally Posted by Zx Zero Zx

Build more units and attack more people. It is how you win on all difficulties, just as you go up higher it's all about how quickly you do it.

Yeah, but "how?"

[Zx Zero Zx]

Originally Posted by Marcvs Avrelivs

Yeah, but "how?"

Hmm, WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP. I just finished a game where I had a 4 pop city that had over 500 turns of unhappiness left because of whipping, something like 30 unhappiness from it. Yet I had a stack of 50+ Maces, Pikes, Crossbows, and Longbows, along with another 30 Trebs.

But if you want the more safe and secure win expand to 6+ GOOD cities, share food and cottages if you have, and go for Lib into Riffling. Then conquer the world.

For terms of speed my normal tech and build order goes as follows:
Tech:
Food tech ( Ag or AH depending on whats around) -> Bronze working if I have more than 4 forests in my capital -> then Mysticism if I'm not creative -> then Writing to bulb Math with the GS from running 2 in the Cap -> after that it's all about getting Alpha before more than 2 of the AI have it and trading it around for everything else you need.

Build:
Worker -> Warriors until pop 3 -> chop out a worker if I have a bunch of forests ( having 2 worker will actually speed up the settler) -> then chop the out of those forests for settlers and workers and Axes/Chariots or Archers if no Horse or Copper until you get writing and then chop and whip out a libary. After than your other cities can help with the expansion.

[Zx Zero Zx]

Oh I forgot post a 4000 BC game where people can shadow and tell you what they would do, and play along and post their games.