First Monarch Game

[Jorgo_Mono]

CIVILIZATION III COMPLETE

Alright guys, long time lurker, new-ish poster. I'm sure you get alot of there "First ------- Game" threads where some newb/noob rolleyes needs help.

Well, I am one of those noobs. I recently started my first ever Monarch game. I was playing on Chieften for the past few months. *Prepares to be smited* I moved up to Warlord a few weeks ago, and I realized it was almost as easy as Chieften. So, after my first Warlord game, I bumped up to Regent. Since that time, I have won three regent game. (Domination as France, Space Race as France, Domination as Iroqious) I feel that I am rather comfortable with Regent difficulty, and thought, oh, what the hell, why not boost up to Monarch. This time I picked up a Civ I hadn't played in a looooong time...Germany. Things looked ok at the start, decent starting position. The Dutch were to the north of me, the Greeks to the south. Well, apon entering the Middle Ages, I got Enginering as my free tech (Scientific Civ) and began researching Feudalism. (Also note: The Hitties at this time were at war with Persia on the other side of the continent.) When that Tech was complete, I got a SGL. I was so happy, I immediatly spent him to rush Sun Tzu's Art of War. (This brings up an interesting point, can a Scientific Civ get a SGL with the free tech they recieve at the beginning on each era?) When Art of War was completed I got my Golden Age. I decided to make the most of it, and decided to pick on the Dutch before they got their UU. The stratagy was successful, and all the Dutch cities in the visible radius of me had a German governer in place after a few turns. (*Note* This War netted my two MGL, I used both to make two Armies, one full of Medieval Infantry, the other empty in Berlin.)

After some tech brokering, I caught up to the Greeks and the Hitties (Oh yeah, the Russians are NE of me, but they are pretty lagging in Tech.). The Hitties at this point had just about finished of the Persians (This surprised me immensly, I suspected the Immortals to carry the day.) Now, this is where I'm stuck. When I researched Gunpower, it didn't take me long to find that I didn't have any Saltpeter. And the Hitties did, right near our mutual borders. Natural solution was war, of course. It failed, the Hitties had a much bigger Army than me, and the RNG decided to pick on me. So I reloaded, and declared on the Greeks. I figured that if I can't have Saltpeter, I'll take some more land, maybe outmatch the Hitties that way. Also failed, this time the RNG was really being a bully. So...I need some advice. Here's asave of my game before I declared on either the Hitties or the Greeks;

 

[Kumquat]

Monarchy? You need more workers too but this is about saltpeter not your economy. The saltpeter is right in front of you though...where are your knights?? Build some trebs declare war get an alliance with Greece go on the defensive and let them go at it for awhile then move your army in and and take the saltpeter city. Just thought I would mention Russia has coastal spices

 

[Jorgo_Mono]

Monarchy?

Meh, I know everybody loves Republic, but I've always favored Monarchy, even if it is a statisticaly 'worse' gov't. Besides, I felt like being symmetrical with the difficulty.

get an alliance with Greece

I've tried that, If I recall correctly they aren't very willing to go into it.

then move your army in and and take the saltpeter city

The problem is, as soon as I declare war, they upgrade their pikes to muskets. (Both Hitties and Greece has done this) And the RNG just doesn't want my MI to beat Muskets, for some reason.

 

[Kumquat]

280 gpt monarch vs 446 gpt Republic You should be able to solo Gordium and Pasargadae easy...Get knights make a knight army then weaken the defenders with trebs and you have saltpeter(put the knight army on the hill while you besiege Gordium with a treb stack and your MIs).

 

[Jorgo_Mono]

Never been fond of knights, but I'll try it.

I know that continueing to argue in defense of Monarchy is probably hopeless, but won't my populace become a bit...distressed after the loss of Military Police?

 

[Kumquat]

Your people will get grumpy but Russia is really weak and they have spices Also you have temples, Caths, and Marketplaces once you get spices you will get the lux bonus.

 

[Jorgo_Mono]

Well this is just great, a turn before I was ready to declare on the Hitties, the Greeks declare on me! They've taken Stuttgart so far with Crusaders, but my Knights are sitting right outside Sparta, time to see how this will turn out.

 

[Kumquat]

I was pretty sure they were going to declare on you Thats why I suggested an alliance in the first place. Crusaders...good luck

 

[Jorgo_Mono]

Well, I just took Sparta and the Knight's Templar (Not to mention the Dyes outside of Sparta). No more Crusaders from them...hmm, I know the Greece has Salt somewhere, I might consider continueing this war to capture it rather than war with the Hitties.

 

[vmxa]

Hannover making a university and it is only making 4 beakers. It makes 4 net
shields now, so it takes 50 turns to build it. Probably longer as it probably
did not make 4 shields for the whole time and it still has 23 turns to complete
it.

So it will grow, well not quickly as it has only +2 food. You have 12 native
workers and some slaves, I did not count them. You have over 20 cities.

This means you are hopelessly behind on worker task and this is why you are not way out in front. Well couple that with the wide spacing and using Monarchy.

Monarchy is a great government, IF you are going to be at war much of the time and will not have plenty of luxs. If you are not gong to be at war much of the time, it is going to slow you down. You can of course do it. I once won at Sid without coming out of despotism, but you have to kill everyone.

BTW I play a lot of Always War and hence use Monarchy most of my games.

So back to Hannover. We see a a slave building a road on a hill and a worker
irrigating a desert tile. These should not be occurring right now. Look at the
town. It has three mined plain tiles now that are not being worked.

It has a forest not chopped. It has two irrigate plains being worked with no
road? So we wasted turns mining those tiles, wasting turns on the hill and
desert, while we do not get the 10 shields from the forest or the gold from the 2 plains.

You also spent a lot of worker turns mining a mountain with iron. Just road it
as no one is working that tile either. You replicate this across your empire
and you have probably got enough worker turns to get some very useful task
completed and increase your income and production.

These are ALWAYS the main reason players post their Regent/Warlord games asking for input.

1) lack of workers
2) not using workers effectively
3) did not expand well enough
4) building things that cannot justify (temples/libs/uni/cath/col.

Note you can build temples and libs and even units, just not every where and
not immediately.

5) too wide spacing (this leads to more lost worker turns and no gain.
6) too many defenders


So first thing to do is to grab some of these workers and make them do
something that will increase your income/research/shields.

Drop a few more towns down in some of the space that is going to waste.
Do not build any more pikes, you only have one front. Here is where Monarchy
hurts. You now have an interest in making units for MP duty, but they cost and will not do any fighting, so they are not useful.

If you had been in republic you, you would not need MP units and all units
could be at the border. Ok, not all.

Take some of the obsolete units and use them as either MP's or disband them for shields.

Get more bombardment units, you cannot do wrong with pinging units and towns.
You have two long rivers, one really long and they no towns founded upon them?

Solo workers are clearing jungle? You do not have enough work force to mess
around with jungles. No working on mountains or hills, unless it has tactical
value or a resource and still no mines. You do not have the workers for that
now.

No cath, this is regent. Wait not at Sid either. Colosseums are never to be
build.

You are thinking about a war and yet have many workers at the border? Move them away. The front line towns can wait for improvements, except maybe a road. If you need a road, cover the workers with an army.

 

[Spoonwood]

Bump almost all of what vmxa said. ESPECIALLY the part about workers. Also, I'd suggest that you road up all squares you'll use for faster movement and a little extra commerce. Bump what they said about TREBUCHETS (more trebuchets than knights). I doubt the importance of COMBINED arms can get overestimated, especially when fighting untis with higher defense values. Once you have your panzers this might not matter as much, but until then use trebuchets. Also... what victory condition do you have in mind? I'd seriously suggest that you have a victory condition in mind before you learn mining, road-buliding, and irrigation (in other words, before you start the gaem). For each different victory conditon you'll want a different strategy (with the exception perhaps of conquest vs. domination obviously as well as diplomatic vs. space ship for some players at least, since you'll want to race forward in tech and build U.N. asap either way).