[BTS] ✌ [COMPLETED T237/500 WIN] Monarch Shadow Game - Washington | Help a Noble/Prince Player Level Up

[Araius]

New York shouldn't be working the unimproved cow right now, there are better tiles to work. Remember that Expansive gives extra for every four and gives NO extra bonus on surplus when building workers.
Talking about unimproved cow, you should probably improve that before chopping the nearby forests.

Another note is that your fur-fish-marble city site isn't properly fogbusted so i'd be tempted to move the warrior one south. Fogbusting works as a 5x5 square around your unit whether you have visibility or not

 

[Gumbolt]

Not running the gold resource was a mistake as it still provides 10 hammers but also 7 commerce whilst building workers.

Not sure why you are not improving the cow resource now. 4F 2H is very nice. The mine near the capital is not great. Ideally clear forest on grassland rivers for cottages. Hammers over mines more important. Plus you would run 2x fur now and not the mine.

The fog buster next to Hatty border is wasted as she is likely fogbusting 2 tiles from her borders. The warrior near there should be 1 south too. The one on border west and slight north. Each unit fogbusts a 5x5 area. Fogbusting city sites is important

At some point you will want a settler or 2. Perhaps that should be double chopped from capital. Blocking off Shaka more could be good.

Building all these workers when stealing workers works so well on Monarch. Worker stealing might delay his next settler.

Overall keep expanding.Pottery for granary too. Pottery next.

I did give a slight spoiler on city locations earlier. Apologies for that.

At some point you want roads to connect cities as this provides 1 commerce. Albeit chopping for settler and food resources should come first. 4 cities by 2000bc was probably possible here.

 

[jnebbe]

The blue tile is appealing because it will limit Shaka's border expansion, correct?

It's more making sure you get a good number of cities and don't get boxed in.

It looks like workers aren't being managed correctly. It's super super important that you have a worker ready at a new city to improve the food source immediately after settling. Everything in civ4 revolves around food and you almost always want to improve your food resource asap.

As others have said, your fogbusting needs some work. Do you know how to fogbust?

Also 1 more thing, make sure you're running science slider at either 0% or 100%, not inbetween

 

[placid_coolie]

thanks for all the critique and comments. have replayed some turns and optimize things as suggested.

turn 54

4th city founded.
finished teching TW and Pottery

Building granaries in all cities.

Tech: Writing?

Spoiler 4th city in place :

Spoiler city screens of all 4 cities :

 

[placid_coolie]

New York shouldn't be working the unimproved cow right now, there are better tiles to work. Remember that Expansive gives extra for every four and gives NO extra bonus on surplus when building workers.
Talking about unimproved cow, you should probably improve that before chopping the nearby forests.

After reading your message, I quietly reproach myself. I need to be more diligent with this.

Here's how I would settle

Spoiler :

I looked at the save and there's only 756 land tiles which is really not a lot. I think I would usually settle on the yellow tile but since land is so low I like settling the blue tile a lot, or maybe 2E of the blue tile to share copper, and then you can backfill your cities later.

What's the justification for settling the red tile between two incense with no adjacent food bonus?

As others have said, your fogbusting needs some work. Do you know how to fogbust?

Knew about the 5x5 tiles, but was not precise with the placement.

Are the tiles directly adjacent to city borders protected from barb spawns? if so, how many tiles outside of the city border is barb-spawn safe?

thanks

 

[lymond]

Are the tiles directly adjacent to city borders protected from barb spawns? if so, how many tiles outside of the city border is barb-spawn safe?

No and just the tiles "lit up" by your borders.

What's the justification for settling the red tile between two incense with no adjacent food bonus?

jnebbe seems to be going for a land blocking approach. I don't usually prescribe that idea. I want good and synergistic cities.

Rice/gold is probably not something I would have considered on higher levels nor would it likely have been available to you anyway.

Yeah, I meant to mention the 0-100% research dealio early. It's very useful to use this method, especially early, as there is a rounding bug with the sliders. (You can see this if you check the amounts of gold vs. beakers at 0 and 10%..try it out) The bug disappears later as beaker modifiers are built and you run scientists, but it is still something I use throughout the game. Run just enough full tax to then finish a tech at 100% research.

 

[Araius]

You're building a riverless cottage in your capital when there's a perfectly nice river to build cottages next to.
Philadelphia should probably be working the wheat at some point otherwise it's not going to grow much at all.
I'd prioritse building roads to connect your cities (You'll get four more if you hook up your cities and also it would make axe rushing the currently metal-less Shaka easier) and chopping the granaries right now and especially not building mines, there are more important things right now.

 

[konata_LS]

There is a very good article to read about the early tech choice, city placement, worker management, etc.: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/beginner-help-the-basics.648469/
You may also get access to that article in @ Fippy's signature.

Also a very good tutorial video.

Spoiler Introduction to Immortal :

The title is "introduction to Immortal", but the general principle can be applied to Monarch games. Watching the video would give you a detailed picture about where to move your warriors, fog busting, send your workers to improve which tile or chop forests, deal with diplomacy... The leader in the video is also Washington. So the things you learn from the video would certainly give you some hints.

There are other great LP videos on Youtube, but some of them might be too advanced for new players. Fippy's Beginner help and Henrik's videos should be enough for people who want to win consistently at Monarch.

GL for your shadow game

 

[placid_coolie]

Turn 69

5th city founded

Teching: Alphabet

Spoiler 5th city online :

another settler on the way to grab the marble +fish southeast corner before Egypt gets to it.

need the experts' input before moving on...
+ what would you tech now?

 

[jnebbe]

Marble city next looks good, then backfill your land. Make sure you have enough workers so you don't have to work any unimproved tiles
Finish chopping out that library in washington and then start running a scientist or two for the philosophy bulb
Teching alphabet is usually a big no-no since you can easily trade for it. Should tech down the Aesthetics line and start to get failgold, probably monarchy after that? You can easily trade for alphabet later, the ai goes for aesthetics really late
Also make sure you're running science slider at 0% until you have enough gold to completely finish the tech at 100%. For example here you committed 200 beakers to alphabet where it would've been better to go aesthetics. If you still had the gold from running slider at 0%, you would be able to change your mind on tech if that makes sense

 

[coanda]

Teching alphabet is usually a big no-no since you can easily trade for it.

On Monarch, sometimes it's finicky (I think I remember a Monarch shadow game someone had years ago where nobody was willing to trade the poor player Alphabet until like 0 AD or something ridiculous). Certainly as you move up to higher difficulties, "easy to get Alphabet in trade" becomes true. It's also more true on a Pangaea map (like this one), because the AI priority for Alphabet has a significant weight factor that scales linearly with number of players met. Pangaea maps tend to encourage meeting lots of neighbors early in the game, which in turn leads AIs to be quicker about getting Alphabet.

 

[placid_coolie]

thank you @jnebbe @coanda !

I'm actually really fascinated by this tech trading part of civ4 gameplay.

While searching for more info, I found this old gem from 2017 by @lymond (vide infra)

AI priority techs (i.e. AIs always focus on these techs)
Archery (I rarely ever tech this myself..to clarify, there are many games I never have this tech at all)
Religious techs
Iron Working
Sailing
Maths
Alpha
Calendar
Feudalism
Machinery
Engineering
Guilds.......

I need to put this on a sticker paper and slap it on the computer monitor.

Replaying turns and will report back (after finishing those new Better Call Saul episodes )

p/s what are your thoughts on imminently losing those elephants and horses tiles to the north to Shaka? I'm a little concerned by that.

 

[placid_coolie]

Played to Turn 79

Six cities at 900BC

All cities working improved tiles except for philadelphia (rectifying this with worker building cottage 2 west of philly and sending another worker to improve the plain hill 1e of philly.

Otherwise all cities are working the correct tiles.

I have Washington working 2 scientists.

Also roading a trade route to connect the southeast marble+fish city to capital.

Spoiler 6 Cities :

Finished teching Aesthetics, Literature next?

I wonder if we could do Masonry to get the Mids going since we have marble?

Spoiler Next Tech? :

Will settle City #7 at west coast (crab+marble+sheep)

Oh and the area northeast of Atlanta appears vacant and ready for occupation - settle more territories there?

Any thoughts? Please do comment coz one can really use some quality feedback here... thank you.

 

[Araius]

The 'Mids is Stone and not Marble, maybe you meant the Great Library as you were thinking of getting Literature?

I'm reluctant to give advice at this open point of the game since I'm a mere Immortal player and I feel this forum is a sea of Deity players.
What I can say is that if you want to be peaceful you have to settle that enormous amount of land NW of you and maybe go for Music for the Great Artist for a Golden Age. If you want war, get yourself Construction and kill the only aggressive guy in your game, Shaka. Take his elephants too.

You forgot to improve the Rice near Atlanta.
Also you should preference grassland cottages over mines at this point in the game. Most of your production should come from

 

[lymond]

I'm actually really fascinated by this tech trading part of civ4 gameplay.

I need to put this on a sticker paper and slap it on the computer monitor.

Ha...I was prolly spitballing at the time, but its fairly close to accurate. Alpha is kinda less a priority tech but rather more a factor of conditions like coanda mentioned above. However, on higher levels you, on pangaea like maps, you can be pretty confident that an AI will beeline Alpha..and it's usually the first guy to Writing. In ...say...more semi-iso situations it will be less an AI priority.

Most early Military techs like BW/IW will be an AI focus, up through like Engineering and Guilds. Some AIs don't prioritize Religious techs, but there's enough Zealots around for them to cheapen quickly.

Replaying turns and will report back (after finishing those new Better Call Saul episodes )

hells yeah! go go Nacho!
(edit:

Spoiler :

oh no!

p/s what are your thoughts on imminently losing those elephants and horses tiles to the north to Shaka? I'm a little concerned by that.

Pretty sure you already have. You can see his borders there. It'd probably be Shaka's first priority to settle other than the gold/rice you settled. Again, keep in mind that on even higher levels you're not coming close to settling these spots, unless you rush or choke him. I still don't much care for rice/gold spot anyway.

Remember....always improve food specials first. Food is King in this game and should always be prioritized over mines and stuff.

Still think an early rush of Shaka woulda been good here and Ulundi is a nice city..oh well.

Need to check your diplo stuff too.

 

[placid_coolie]

Played another 10 turns to Turn 89

Ok let's take down Shaka.

Expanded to City #7 (west coast crab/marble)

Tech > Math > Construction

Spoiler city #7 :

So once construction is online, cats + axeman en masse.

Great Scientist will be ready in 5 turns > build Academy?

 

[Nick723]

If going for a construction attack, another nice option is to bulb maths

 

[placid_coolie]

i look forward to all your replies with much anticipation and interest... but...

to be honest, advice has been getting a little spotty or at least not as granular as an inexperienced player would have liked. not sure if i'm doing things right or if my play is too atrocious to the point that one is beyond saving.
there are just so many micro stuffs happening... without feedback, it's hard to know where to improve.

sorry just venting here, I'll just wait a little more.

 

[Araius]

Warrior near Chicago should be scouting Egypt.
You should send one of your Boston warriors to scout Zulu.
Chicago should build a Granary and not a Library. If a city has any potential for growth it should get a Granary ASAP.
Remeber that to two pop whip axemen you need to have less than five invested otherwise it's a one pop whip.
I'd personally wait until you're nearing Construction before you build units due to unit cost, though it's probably fine on Monarch.
Also, it's good to have a safety spearman or two in your main stack just in case Shaka hits you with mounted units like chariots, horse archers or elephants.

It feels almost unlosable at this point to be honest with you.

 

[placid_coolie]

Thank you @Araius

Played till Turn 129

1. Decimated Shaka (took 5 cities)
2. Captured 1 nice barb city southwest of Bulawayo, so total spoils for this round 6 cities.
3. Tech trade - got Alpha, Monarchy, IW and Sailing
4. Teching Music, should be first to get this.
5. First GScientist settled Academy
6. Also finished The Great Library (in capital), now building National Epic in capital)
7. Second GScientist will be out in 1 turn

Spoiler 350 AD - 13 cities :

Spoiler tech situation :

Spoiler AI tech trade :

How am I doing?