First Monarch game help

[berserks01]

So, til about a week ago, I was consistently playing on Chieftan and Warlord and beating the AI by leaps and bounds. Then last week I tried my luck at Regent and again won by leaps-1 and bounds-1. So I figured, why not try Monarch, so I did.

And learned that this is totally different from the 3 levels below it. Right of the bat, I'm already behind in tech/culture/size/and units Science is pretty expensive too, but I managed to beeline to Philosophy and got Lib as my free tech and built the GL. Then I stop researching (this is probably the problem here) to generate more income.

I switched to Monarchy several turns after I got it to finish up my GL. And several turns after that I've been in wars non-stop. Zulu just attacked me out of the blue, so I held them off and got most of the other civs in against them. Then, after my MA runs out, I attacked Russia cuz they have saltpepper and I THOUGHT I didn't Well, I'm the type that captures instead of raze and resettle, so I had a couple of flips but luckily I never fortified inside cities until they're completely wiped out or I use obsolete troops to garrison. Built the FB in the center of Russian cities, so it's less corrupt. So now I"m taking out the Zulu and heading toward Aztec afterwards. It's almost safe to say that I got the game in the bag.

However, my questions deals with how do I keep up with tech and gold during the AA cuz that's where I fell behind. Somehow their culture grow like crazy while mine doesn't grow at all til I have a temple or lib in it, so I'm always afraid of flips. I guess Republic would help with generating more gold, but I'm in constant war so I usually choose Monarchy.

Here's my save from somewhere during the AA, and my current save.

Now that I look at it, I could've done with more workers to improve the land faster

 

[sorky]

I didn't look the save but if you say you could have build more workers, i'm sure it's a big hole in your strat

And the fact that you shut down research because of GL is not the problem. You could shut down it, but you shouldn't stop trading. If one AI have the tech lead, trade more tech to others, even for free! GL is only a support, and you should try to win monarch without.

 

[vmxa]

One of the reason you can fall behind for a time in the AA is the goody huts and contacts. If you have any expansion civs they will have a better unit to find huts and other civs (scouts).

So they can get lots of AA techs and with trades, will be deep into the AA tech list quickly. You will not be able to research fast enough and if you do not make some trades, you will be down some techs for a time. No problem.

I don't see why they are doing all that well in culture so early, unless you are talking about some religious civs.

The GL on Monarch level is a tough call. Often it will not be all that useful. If you are not on a pangea map with lots of early contacts, it could be a waste of shields.

This is because the AI is only so so at research at this level and if it does not have contacts and make trades, you should go ahead and keep researching. The other half of it is that you probably will not be putting away all that much gold anyway.

Chances are your net income is not all that great, especially if you are determined to make wonders.

Flips should not be an issue, unless you are talking about captured towns. Those are potentially at risk. Really it is uncommon for early game as they are outlying towns for them as well. Later you have few problems as you are taking the empire down.

I cannot see going to Monarchy in any standard game other than Sid. WW should not be hard to handle unless you are truely doing an Always War or Oscillating Wars. Those games are the time to use Monarchy.

 

[berserks01]

This is a pangea map, and it's like always war in that I'm always at war but not against every civ. I'm always at war against 1-2 civs at a time, no peace time in between because I get a few civs into the war and leave the weaker ones out hoping that they'd get pulled into the opposing side and I take them out without WW.

I guess if I keep researching even with GL and build just a couple more workers, I should be alset to keep up in the AA. I expand about the same as the AI I think, I didn't do a city count, but my location surrounded by the civs so I don't have room to expand more than them without those cities being at risk.

Guess I just not use to this level yet ... it being my first game and all

 

[Fatal Exception]

Since you're often at war it sounds like you are in a good position to use what I've seen called "pointy stick research" methods.

Although at Monarch you should be able to outresearch the AI... you can still turn your research slider to 0, make a scientist somewhere to research deadend techs in 40 (or 32) turns, and get your techs by beating them out of your war enemies.

It goes like this: beat on an AI for 20 turns then make peace in return for all their techs. 20 turns later do it again. If there's a weak or distant enemy civ that other civs are going to war with, join in - but don't send any units to fight them. Then 20 turns later make peace in return for their techs. Etcetera. You do need a military that the AI considers strong to do this (ie, favor offensive units).

 

[Skullsplitter]

Just finishing up my first monarch (since, um, 2003 or so) and had a few questions.

1. How can I draw the false start? Its so nice to be able to do warfare when you are the one attacked, but unless I just stay at continual warfare from AA, I find the AI reluctant to engage. I've tried leaving workers or settlers or even outdated troops standing right on the border, I've tried intruding on their land and wait until the troops are automatically removed, then move back in, even establishing cities to push back the border, then leaving it totally undefended, but no luck. They just won't start the war.

2. I've seen lots on packing cities tighter than the "3 diagonal, 1 orthogonal" (one overlapping tile per city) around the capital, and since most of the tiles remain unused until towards the end of the game, this seems to make sense. OTOH, I'm getting enough cities that even the capital is fairly corrupt, and even more cities isn't going to help matters much. So what to do? Tighter pack around capital and forbidden palace or not?

3. Temples, temples, temples. Seems to me I HAVE to build them to get the expansion. Or am I missing something? I've seen several posts where they recommend not building them (or IIRC, Moonsinger recommended selling them after the expansion.) I left them intact throughout the game mostly to keep Babylon from getting double my culture at end of game, and also for happiness.

4. Happiness slider. Left at 10% almost all the game. Tweaked up a time or two. Hurt by only three lux, helped by keeping cities small. Is there a better way?

5. Tech slider. Left at 0% until Modern.

6. Communications. I waited to see if someone would offer more for contact with other civs, but no joy. World map or 32 Gold or so was all I could ever get. But until I found the last civ, they wanted 20 GPT or 3-4 techs or some such ludicrous amount for the introduction. What gives? Do y'all just hand over contact right away for free?

7. City placement. Because of corruption, there seems to be no point in avoiding settling on bonus grassland. Bonus food is another matter, but any resource that gives shields or gold all goes to corruption anyway. Or am I missing something here?

Enough for now, I guess...

Thanks!

 

[Nergal]

Try a scientic civ for your first monarch game. Never build temples if you can possibly avoid it, libraries for extra research and cultural expansion. Build cites CxxC so you dont need expansion, corrupt cities use specialists. Lots of workers, 1.5 per city if industrious or 2 if not. Marketplaces for commerce and happiness. My standard Monarch game would be Republic as early as possible, ideally build barracks before any military units. Say two cities producing units for the entire nation initially. Control the area you want, chokepoints and border guards. Then you can think about libraries and markets. Try to build on rivers so you dont need aqueducts, use the lux slider for happiness or convert to specialists Grow the cites build units and take the resources and lux you need.

 

[vmxa]

"Skullsplitter

"1. How can I draw the false start? Its so nice to be able to do warfare when you are the one attacked, but unless I just stay at continual warfare from AA, I find the AI reluctant to engage."

I presume you mean by false start is to get them to start the war. If in fact they are not going to attack or take the bait, that suggest you are much stronger than those nations.

Why do you need them to start the war, just for a little war happy? WW is not an issue, if you get the war done in 20 turns. That should be easy, if you are strong, you can at least get peace at that point.

"2. I've seen lots on packing cities tighter than the "3 diagonal, 1 orthogonal" (one overlapping tile per city) around the capital, and since most of the tiles remain unused until towards the end of the game, this seems to make sense. OTOH, I'm getting enough cities that even the capital is fairly corrupt, and even more cities isn't going to help matters much. So what to do? Tighter pack around capital and forbidden palace or not?"

Are we talking about C3C or an earlier version? The FP is not going to do all that much in C3C. The capitol cannot become corrupt, unless you are in communism. I would not go tighter than CxxC.

In C3C corruption is not much of a concern, just use specialist to research or raise gold.

"3. Temples, temples, temples. Seems to me I HAVE to build them to get the expansion. Or am I missing something? I've seen several posts where they recommend not building them (or IIRC, Moonsinger recommended selling them after the expansion.) I left them intact throughout the game mostly to keep Babylon from getting double my culture at end of game, and also for happiness."

Well you do not have to build them when using CxxC and the borders will be contiguous. If wider than C3C or in a case where the terrain disruptes that layout, use a lib or a temple. You can sell either the lib or a temple after the first expansion. You could just ignore the expansion in some cases.

You can avoid a concern about culture loss by killing them, building the UN or launch a space ship.

"4. Happiness slider. Left at 10% almost all the game. Tweaked up a time or two. Hurt by only three lux, helped by keeping cities small. Is there a better way?"

It is Monarch, so what is the problem with happiness? You get 2 citizen content. 3 lux with a market in the cities that are productive. In unproductive, specialist. Use the slider more, if need be, 20 or 30 is fine.

"5. Tech slider. Left at 0% until Modern."

No wonder you were worried by Hami's culture. Zero research, the game must have been so slow. At Monarch I would research at the highest I could. The AI will not be able to keep up.

"6. Communications. I waited to see if someone would offer more for contact with other civs, but no joy. World map or 32 Gold or so was all I could ever get. But until I found the last civ, they wanted 20 GPT or 3-4 techs or some such ludicrous amount for the introduction. What gives? Do y'all just hand over contact right away for free?"

I would not sell them contacts at this level or any really. I would not need the money and they would not have muchy anyway.

"7. City placement. Because of corruption, there seems to be no point in avoiding settling on bonus grassland. Bonus food is another matter, but any resource that gives shields or gold all goes to corruption anyway. Or am I missing something here?"

Not once you get a good size amount of land in the empire. Just drop the towns down. I like to leave all grass available for irrigation, but not fanatical about it.

 

[Skullsplitter]

Sorry, I should have started w/ game parameters. I'm playing vanilla, 1.29f, huge, pangea (that turned out to be three continents), rampaging barbs, 7 AI (so I can't miss seeing an MPP) random civ.... um that's it, I think.

CxxC placement means everyone just gets the 8 plus the city tile, right? Overage become specialists? As a general rule, tax or science?

Re: declaring war, I thought that generally makes everyone hate you. Or does that only matter if I were to want a UN win?

Re: happiness, yeah, having only 8 tiles worked would eliminate that problem nicely. Trying to get 6 happy to offset the 6 unhappy was my problem. DOH!

Re: tech slider, ah! I see. At regent I was always researching at max. What difficulty level were people talking about shutting off research in turn 0? It was something of a pain to still be despotism AD 250. Particularly when the stupid wonder triggered my GA ca. 500 BC...

Thanks for the input!

 

[Skullsplitter]

Oh, one other thing. CxxC is going to leave a lot of the map unclaimed, right? Or do you keep expanding even though corruption is starting to destroy the first ring of cities? CxxC is probably going to take 200+ cities to settle the continent.

When resources show up outside your empire, do you build a city or colony out in the boonies and road/harbor/airport to connect, just leave it be, or what?

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, any way to predict an autoraze? I figured if the city was one of the first around the AI capitol, it was probably safe to take in the early AD. Then again, maybe being autorazed isn't that big a deal. (What I'd been doing is adding workers until I'm the majority nationality, wait one turn, disband, resettle where I really wanted the city.) Is this another of those things where autoraze ticks people off but doesn't affect trading?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

auto raze happens if the city is size 1 and hasn't expanded it's culture.

razing ticks people off, but the AI will trade with you while pissed off... up until the time they attack you, of course.

I would not add people to a city just to raze it later.

 

[Bowsling]

Not having saltpepper can be very detrimental to your empire... how will your citizens properly enjoy scrambled eggs?