Conquest Victory

[Voodopizzaman]

Hi guys,

I am playing on Monarch difficulty, so far I have only won through Space Race and diplomacy on this level.
Right now i am trying to get my First conquest win, but to be honest I've no real idea how to do that.
Can anyone suggest a strategy for conquest on Monarch?

 

[elitetroops]

What's the mapsize, map type and game speed?

 

[Voodopizzaman]

Standard, normal speed. Most time continents or inland sea

 

[Gumbolt]

Getting some kind of tech lead on the Ai with a strong cottage capital before 1ad. That or a mids assisted specialist economy.

If you are getting lots of space/diplomatic wins it shows you are not attacking the Ai enough. Early HA rushes?? Cuirs rush???

Helps to have a good start. This will normally mean expanding to 7-8 cities by 1ad. Worker first at start and worker techs.

If you play monarch right on a decent map you should be easily able to lib MT or steel. Then whip out a large army. That or draft out an army of rifles?

Post a save and let's roll out the AI destruction.

 

[Voodopizzaman]

What about the very beginnend of the game? Usually i expand to Five cities by chopping. How many cities do you suggest for the HA Rush?

 

[Voodopizzaman]

Sry, I wanted to write "very beginning"

 

[Gumbolt]

Post a starting save and we can work from there. I would not be building all settlers from chopping alone.

For an HA rush on immortal I normally build 3 cities. Set up granary and barracks in the cities. (Whipped or chopped.) Key here is the early cities have food resources. Normally in inner ring or on outskirts of capital. 3 cities by 1500bc is probably a good target. Unless you plan on building wonders. Although wonders early on can be a distraction.

 

[NihilZero]

Three is a good number. Four might work too. I've done it with two and it worked fine. The critical thing is being able to tech HBR fast enough and having forests to chop.

Three different ways to get to HBR, all of which can work - cottages, library working scientist, or Oracle.

Unless you plan on building wonders. Although wonders early on can be a distraction.

Wonders and HA rushes really don't mix, unless it's the aforementioned Oracle, imo. Although this is Monarch we're talking about...

If you're inexperienced in early rushing, one of the trickiest things to figure out is how not to crash your economy. Tune in to the Strategy and Tips forum for advice on that.

 

[MegaLurker]

On Monarch you can probably take your whole continent if it's not too big with a focused Horse Archer opening.

 

[blunderwonder]

Hi guys,

I am playing on Monarch difficulty, so far I have only won through Space Race and diplomacy on this level.
Right now i am trying to get my First conquest win, but to be honest I've no real idea how to do that.
Can anyone suggest a strategy for conquest on Monarch?

Early rushes are fun, but domination/conquest generally happens later. Just familiarize yourself with libbing MT and using cuirassiers or cannons. You might try an engineering rush but i find its a bit riskier if more fun, trebs are cool but sorta ruin a lib race.

 

[Gwynnja]

Early rushes are fun, but domination/conquest generally happens later. Just familiarize yourself with libbing MT and using cuirassiers or cannons. You might try an engineering rush but i find its a bit riskier if more fun, trebs are cool but sorta ruin a lib race.

On monarch it should be fine to knock out a neighbor or even two or three with horse archers and still lib MT.

 

[elitetroops]

Early rush or not, the easiest way is still to lib MT and cuir rush everyone left alive. You can do this by expanding peacefully to 7-8 cities and bulb your way to lib, or you can take out one or 2 neighbours with for example HA, then bulb your way to lib. Sure you could also take out your entire continent with HAs on monarch, but that is not exactly easy if you haven't won a military victory before.

The strategy when aiming for cuir rush is to focus on the top part of the tech tree. The wonders you want are usually Great Library and Parthenon, possibly Mausolleum of Mausollos and Taj Mahal. And of course the Oracle if you can get it, which you should be able to on monarch. (On monarch I'd probably aim to oracle Civil Service, but you can go for something cheaper if CS feels hard to get). Then you aim to produce Great Scientists, the first one builds an academy in your best science city (mostly capital if running Bureaucracy) the next bulb Philo, Paper and Education (edu requires two Great Scientists). The biggest techs you need to selftech are Nationalism and Gunpowder. You can either bulb or selftech liberalism once you have Nationalism and Music, then take MT as your free trech.

The lower part of the tech tree you can usually trade for and mostly don't need to research stuff like Machinery and Guilds yourself. If you don't do an early rush you can also usually trade for HBR later when it's time to prepare for cuir wars.

Once you get close to MT, start building some HA or Elephants that you can upgrade to cuirs as soon as you have MT. When you reach MT you can shut down research completely and just focus on pumping out as many cuirs as possible as fast as possible, as long as you get there early enough to finish the map with cuirs. If it's a continents map and you need astro, then you have to continue researching towards that and possibly even get rifling if it takes you long to get to the other continent.

As Gumbolt suggested, start a game of your own, or participate in a forum game (there's a new NC starting today, right?) and people can help you along the way.

 

[MegaLurker]

On monarch it should be fine to knock out a neighbor or even two or three with horse archers and still lib MT.

On Monarch I think the capture gold from so many cities might get you to lib faster than a peaceful game, considering you self-tech pretty much everything.

 

[rah]

That and if it costs the same in hammers, units vs settlers when you consider the captured workers and already developed land, and the juicy AI capss, yes it can make it faster.