first monarch game

Libadanda · Mar 7, 2014

Hey guys.
I just could easily win an prince so i decided to try monarch for once.
It planned out better then i would ever expected, but damn, those Ai research insane fast and i cant keep up.

I have posted a game and i would appreciate some constructive feedback to learn from.
On the score board im at the top, but with technology im at the bodem.
I was on war for almost the whole game with Boudica, Hannibal and the japanese. i managed to destroy Boudica and later on turned my arrows on Hannibal. But he was one tough bastard.
Then i had the luck i could choose for a resolution to claim war on Hannibal. So a moment later the Koreans and the Japanese joined the fight and there was a race to conquer cities of Hannibal. Hannibal was soon history.
Thank god i was happy, Hannibal was very aggresive the whole game and kept backstabbing me everytime right after the peace treaty ended.

Now im at the point to wander how to go further. I kept the Koreans as pleased as possible the whole game. This resulted in a deffensive pact i now have with them.
The Japs are the strongest at this moment. So i was thinking about attacking the japs together with the Koreans. I must do this very quick, because i have very much difficulty to keep up with military technology and strength. Im afraid that if i wait to long, the Japs will come with tanks and infantry.
With a little luck the English will join the war, because they also hate the japs and had a couple of wars with them allready. Only Saladin keeps leaning back and is in peace for the whole game. Either he is afraid or he has a massive army in the shadows waiting to take over.

I hope you guys can give me some advice.
How do i go from here?
What could i have done better?
I know a lagged some important technologies, but i had to research on military to keep up with the Ai. Or it would mean arrows vs guns.
How can i keep up with technology? or is the advantage bonus at monarch so big the only way is to destroy them?
What is better to focus on to speed up technology, money or research? or both? i now have some more scientist in the city, but i think i did this to late.
i know i lagged in exploring the world and the oceans, but i was to busy waging war the whole time to think about that.

Let me hear what you think!
If not, thanks for reading anyway

elmurcis · Mar 7, 2014

Okay, i checked and played a little bit..
1st - this is game is pretty winable from here.. played maybe some 20 turns and I already declared war to Toku - turned research to 0%, mass upgraded all mounted units you had in cities, now got stack of ~40 curaisers.. ready to push in teritory and get some city.Got Korean in my side too for Replaceable parts tech..
Used all scientists to bulb (no point of sitting them there... for what you kept scientists in city?), so now just few turns left till Physics..
What else... choping all forests you left on map.. built few more workers to improve tiles (many cities was working useless tiles.. had to draft musketman to get out of these tiles).
All cities with good production now will build only curaissers - rifles too long to get.. and Toku also not yet got rifles so have window for attack..

And I agree with comment below

There are some basical problems to resolve before ask "what to do next".. But its completely okay to still learn and learn...

elitetroops · Mar 7, 2014

Libadanda said:
What could i have done better?

The problem with asking this question at this point of the game is that the answer most likely is "everything". (If you are playing anything below deity and not crushing it, then there is most likely room for improvement on most aspects of the game, so the "what could I have done better" question becomes too general.)

Libadanda said:
I know a lagged some important technologies, but i had to research on military to keep up with the Ai. Or it would mean arrows vs guns.

You shouldn't research military to keep up, you should research to get ahead. Warring with units of equal strength is often not wise when you instead could stay at peace until you grab a tech that gives you a big advantage. Often this involves heading for liberalism to grab MT for cuirs or Steel for cannons. The basic strategy for this is to research the upper part of the tech tree, use Great Scientists to bulb stuff (philo, edu, maybe even paper) to get there faster. The AI usually favors the lower parts of the tech tree so you can trade for that stuff.

Great Scientists are by the way probably the most powerful units in the game and you have 3 of them sleeping in your capital... :eek:

You have way too many units in every city. One warrior is enough in most of them unless you don't need extra for HR happiness. The AI won't be making any surprise attacks from the sea if you have land borders. Any potential attack will be directed at the nearest border cities.

Your capital has grass farms and plains cottages. Some quick math... Every population eats 2 :food:

. Grass farm produces 3 :food:

, plains cottage produces 1 :food:

1

+

depending on level. Grass farm + plains cottage gives you a net gain of 1 :hammers:

+cottage

(the 4

is eaten by the 2 pop working the tiles). For 2 population that is a very weak gain. Skip the grass farms and instead have the same 2 guys work 2 grassland cottages. Food is still breakeven, but the one :hammers:

is swapped for the :commerce:

gain from yet another cottage. At this point of the game with the cottage developed to a town, this would mean swapping 1 :hammers:

/turn for 6 or 7 :commerce:

/turn. In your capital with library, academy, monastery and university (which it probably should have by now if you had bulbed edu with those sleeping scientists) and running bureau (which you also should rather than nationhood as you apparently aren't drafting much), 6 or 7 :commerce:

/turn translates to 19 or 22 :science:

/turn. Not a bad deal!

I'd recommend starting a new game and asking for advise earlier. There should be a new Noble's Club game starting today, I think. You can join in there, post your progress and ask for advice and read about what other players are doing for comparison. That would be the best way to learn.

Noble Zarkon · Mar 7, 2014

Sitting Bull is up in the Noble's Club.

Although we call it Nobles Club the files are supplied so you can play any level you want, come and join us, have some fun and learn together!

aitkensam · Mar 8, 2014

Just played this game out to a 1900AD Dom. Thought I'd upload a couple of saves and a few details of how I got to them as it might make the advice more understandable.

The first turn

Spoiler :

1830AD - 1848AD

Spoiler :

1848AD - 1900AD

Spoiler :

Libadanda · Mar 8, 2014

Thanks for the advice so far guys!
The reason i saved some scientists is because i read it somewhere on this site as a tip to not use all of your GP at once. About the forest, i always keep 1 forest near a city for the forest preserve bonus. Well on reflection, maybe i didnt even need it because of all the happiness of all the luxury i allready have. I guess its the force of habit.

I will try all the advice to finish this game as a win

Elitetroops: thx for your math about the grass and the plains. It sounds complicated, but I will study them later on.
But i do not agree with your conviction about the Ai not giving suprise attacks over sea.
Im at work now so i cant see the name of the city, but during my war against Hannibal he did a amfibious surprise attack on my most North-west city on the coast. Suddenly there were a couple of elephants and cats.
So i want to keep the coastal cities save to for any suprise attacks from the sea.

Good idea of the Noble's club. I will join it later on the day when im home!

Thanks for your help and time guys.

Gumbolt · Mar 8, 2014

1830ad cuirs????? That is cutting it very late. On a good game on immortal you want them around 800-1100ad. Of course AI on Monarch tech and expand much slower.

CivNoobie · Mar 8, 2014

Gumbolt said:
1830ad cuirs????? That is cutting it very late. On a good game on immortal you want them around 800-1100ad. Of course AI on Monarch tech and expand much slower.

he's probably not teching right or not trading right.

anyways, when you tech for something, always go to the trade window and look for a tech that nobody has. That way, when you get it, you would have a trade monopoly over everyone else (meaning if you trade that piece of technology for someones', you get 6 techs for the worth of one).

you know what I mean?

Ghpstage · Mar 8, 2014

The reason i saved some scientists is because i read it somewhere on this site as a tip to not use all of your GP at once. About the forest, i always keep 1 forest near a city for the forest preserve bonus.

The first bit is truly awful advice, what arbitrarily savig some up will add is beyond me, especially as in general thngs gained earlier are far more powerful.
Of course saving some for a specific purpose is fine, but you need definite plans i.e.
Want to bulb Philo, Education or some other tech and got a GS too early? Save it.
Got a Great Artist, not going for a culture win and need to GPs for a golden Age? Save it.
etc, etc

Forest preserves are the games most useless improvements, and should only really be considered for lategame cities for the National Park. Saving forests all the way through the game for them just damages your cause far too much to justify.

Libadanda · Mar 9, 2014

CivNoobie said:
he's probably not teching right or not trading right.

anyways, when you tech for something, always go to the trade window and look for a tech that nobody has. That way, when you get it, you would have a trade monopoly over everyone else (meaning if you trade that piece of technology for someones', you get 6 techs for the worth of one).

you know what I mean?

Yea i know what you mean. This is just the kind of advice i was looking for and offcourse the advice of all the others.

Most of the time i dont even know what im doing when im teching. I know some of the important techs and try to focus on them, but i need more experience to truly understand there purpose for the rest of the game.
I got away with this playstyle on Noble and Prince, but not with Monarch. It forces me to explore the endless possibilities of this wonderfull game

Next time i will try to trade smarter with techs and use my GP's earlier. But i will only become competent with that by practice.
At any rate, i learned a lot of this game and all of your feedback.

Noble Zarkon · Mar 9, 2014

Libadanda said:
The reason i saved some scientists is because i read it somewhere on this site as a tip to not use all of your GP at once.

Don't know where you read it, or the context, but it's spectacularly bad advice! No issue keeping one if you know exactly what you will use it for (e.g. founding a Corporation) and have weighed up the costs of not using it immediately but if in doubt use it.

Edit: Sorry just realised I was repeating what Ghpstage said earlier!

pigswill · Mar 9, 2014

On Monarch its usually worth beelining alphabet. Looking at your capital it looks like you only had one food source which is pretty unusual which would have slowed down your start for sure.

capnvonbaron · Mar 9, 2014

Libadanda said:
But i do not agree with your conviction about the Ai not giving suprise attacks over sea.
Im at work now so i cant see the name of the city, but during my war against Hannibal he did a amfibious surprise attack on my most North-west city on the coast. Suddenly there were a couple of elephants and cats.
So i want to keep the coastal cities save to for any suprise attacks from the sea.

I didn't look at the saves but here's a few critical strategies for warring with the AI:

1. The AI will NEVER surprise attack you from the sea if it can access you from the land. This is a game-mechanic fact. The only time it can is on the rare, rare circumstance it has units on transports at sea and it DoWs you (or vice versa) and it turns those units around to your shores. Either way you'll have time to prepare, so you can keep units light in your coastal cities unless you have good reason to suspect the AI will have units at sea. (for late game, see point #6 below as additional insurance against this)
2. I always fortify my units as "sentry" in ocean cities for this reason: they will alert me if an enemy galley shows up for a half-ass backdoor assault. However, you really should have enough navy present to sink these wandering galleys/galleons before they can make a landing. One frigate (or other warship) at sea ready to sink a galleon can potentially do the work of three or more land units by sinking a full transport.
3. If there are off-continent rivals, they will almost ALWAYS amphib assault the city closest to their own borders first, or at least make an attempt before moving to the next closest city. That means you usually only have to stack units in a couple at-risk sea cites, not all of them. If you have a crappy, small space-filler seaside city or cities in the tundra away from the frontlines, don't worry about protecting it too much because even if the AI does take it they aren't gaining much and you can almost always take it back easily enough.
4. Don't settle cities on the sea too much, so you won't have to worry about defending them. Water tiles are generally weak anyways.
5. If you have the option, try and settle so a city can only be accessed by one or two sea tiles. Then park a small stack of naval units on those tiles and keep just one or maybe two units in that city at MOST. It will almost always deter the AI from making a direct assault, so they will have to land their units, giving you at least one extra turn to reinforce, draft/whip, etc... possibly more because if they land siege gear, they'll almost always spend a few turns bombarding before attacking.
6. Air power, air power, air power. Keep blimps and other units handy to scout for approaching navies while they are still far out at sea. If you see one, and have good reason to believe it is aimed at you (it belongs to a warmongery rival, the rival is your worst enemy, etc), delay the assault by begging for one or two gold and get the 10-turn peace treaty. Then you can reinforce seaside cities. Sometimes if you're lucky the AI will stupidly land the units anyways, then declare war after the ten turns... if you own all the tiles on your continent, the enemy stack will disappear off the continent instantly and problem is solved :lol:

if there are unoccupied tiles, you will at least know where the unit stack will end up after the DoW and put your army nearby. Additionally, if you can't stave off invasion, the blimps/fighters/whatever are invaluable to bombard the approaching boats to make the job of killing them easier for your own navy. There's many times I've wiped out dozen-galleon invasion fleets with just a half-dozen blimps and frigates if I find them early enough. Even if they land a few units, I still pursue the retreating transports so the AI can't reload them with more units later.

Libadanda · Mar 10, 2014

pigswill said:
On Monarch its usually worth beelining alphabet. Looking at your capital it looks like you only had one food source which is pretty unusual which would have slowed down your start for sure.

I posted my starting location for this game. I choose to settle here because there is a food source and a lot of rivers. So plenty of farms possible here. And there are a lot of hills for the hamers.
But that is my analysis. And im not a expert on civ. So if you disagree with this, plz tell me why you would do it otherwise??

capnvonbaron said:
I didn't look at the saves but here's a few critical strategies for warring with the AI:

1. The AI will NEVER surprise attack you from the sea if it can access you from the land. This is a game-mechanic fact. The only time it can is on the rare, rare circumstance it has units on transports at sea and it DoWs you (or vice versa) and it turns those units around to your shores. Either way you'll have time to prepare, so you can keep units light in your coastal cities unless you have good reason to suspect the AI will have units at sea. (for late game, see point #6 below as additional insurance against this)
2. I always fortify my units as "sentry" in ocean cities for this reason: they will alert me if an enemy galley shows up for a half-ass backdoor assault. However, you really should have enough navy present to sink these wandering galleys/galleons before they can make a landing. One frigate (or other warship) at sea ready to sink a galleon can potentially do the work of three or more land units by sinking a full transport.
3. If there are off-continent rivals, they will almost ALWAYS amphib assault the city closest to their own borders first, or at least make an attempt before moving to the next closest city. That means you usually only have to stack units in a couple at-risk sea cites, not all of them. If you have a crappy, small space-filler seaside city or cities in the tundra away from the frontlines, don't worry about protecting it too much because even if the AI does take it they aren't gaining much and you can almost always take it back easily enough.
4. Don't settle cities on the sea too much, so you won't have to worry about defending them. Water tiles are generally weak anyways.
5. If you have the option, try and settle so a city can only be accessed by one or two sea tiles. Then park a small stack of naval units on those tiles and keep just one or maybe two units in that city at MOST. It will almost always deter the AI from making a direct assault, so they will have to land their units, giving you at least one extra turn to reinforce, draft/whip, etc... possibly more because if they land siege gear, they'll almost always spend a few turns bombarding before attacking.
6. Air power, air power, air power. Keep blimps and other units handy to scout for approaching navies while they are still far out at sea. If you see one, and have good reason to believe it is aimed at you (it belongs to a warmongery rival, the rival is your worst enemy, etc), delay the assault by begging for one or two gold and get the 10-turn peace treaty. Then you can reinforce seaside cities. Sometimes if you're lucky the AI will stupidly land the units anyways, then declare war after the ten turns... if you own all the tiles on your continent, the enemy stack will disappear off the continent instantly and problem is solved if there are unoccupied tiles, you will at least know where the unit stack will end up after the DoW and put your army nearby. Additionally, if you can't stave off invasion, the blimps/fighters/whatever are invaluable to bombard the approaching boats to make the job of killing them easier for your own navy. There's many times I've wiped out dozen-galleon invasion fleets with just a half-dozen blimps and frigates if I find them early enough. Even if they land a few units, I still pursue the retreating transports so the AI can't reload them with more units later.

Thanks for the good advice about warring with the Ai!! I will surely use them!

because you are the second person that tells me the Ai dont do suprise attacks. i looked for a while and founded the save file a couple of turns just before Hannibal 'surprise' attack me with 2 galleys with cats and elephants on it. He will approach Rotterdam.
I studied the whole happening again to find out why i experienced this as a surprise attack. The first thing is, i dont get a warning!! i only get notification about enemy movement on land, by seeing red dots on the minimap. Is there maybe some kind of setting for this??
Second of all, my Trireme who is on sea patrol. Doesnt do anything to stop them!! Well i guess 'sentry' is better then??
I dont try to argue the definition of a 'surprise' attack in civ. But i experienced this as one and if there are ways to prevent this, plz let me know. Come to think of it now, i think i would have put the Trireme in 'sentry' mode instead of 'seapatrol'.

And the last question about coastal city attacks. Assume im in war with Salladin and he has no 'open borders' with Japan. Where would he attack me? would that most likely be Circassian???

Kallikrates · Mar 10, 2014

On monarch you usually have to self-tech important techs, especially alpha (even on emperor it seems better to tech alpha, apparently on the two highest lvls the AI is fast enough to get it early enough and it is better to tech aesthetics). The same holds for most other key techs. I do not know if the AI tech preferences are consistent (and maybe listed somewhere). But depending on which AIs are in the game you will often find they have some useful techs to "backfill" (if you are good enough, have good land and/or a FIN leader you might be too fast for useful trades at some stage (around liberalism or so). Emperor may be a borderline case, depending on map ans skill, but on Monarch you have to tech yourself what you want to have early.

Libadanda · Mar 10, 2014

Just a printscreen of my starting location for the ease

elitetroops · Mar 10, 2014

Libadanda said:
I posted my starting location for this game. I choose to settle here because there is a food source and a lot of rivers. So plenty of farms possible here. And there are a lot of hills for the hamers.
But that is my analysis. And im not a expert on civ. So if you disagree with this, plz tell me why you would do it otherwise??

That's a really bad start! Actually it is against the "rules" for how most mapscripts balance the starting locations. Usually there should always be 2 food resources+2 more resources in the starting BFC, but occasionally this criteria is not met. You have only rice and wine, which is horribad. In addition you can see in the fog that you are surrounded by forest, so the only sensible move for warrior is SE, which reveals only crap lands... Options are to SIP or to gamble. One possible gamble is settling on rice. You get a faster start, you technically don't lose any food until biology and you can see that it will pick up at least one unforested tile in the BFC that could have another resource. But you lose rivertiles, which is bad. Other option is to wander about, but with this much forest around and no good spots for scouting, that's probably not a good idea...

Rivers for farms and hills for hammers is not the best way to design your capital. Early in the game, which is the most important part of the game, slavery is much more efficient for hammers than hills. Green rivers are better for cottages than for farms (especially with a financial leader), unless you run a specialist economy, which you shouldn't do if you then leave all your great people sleeping in the streets for centuries. This particular capital is a tough one though with so little food. Usually you can farm/pasture any available food and have enough food excess to cottage the rest and also whip the early essential stuff. With this little food it would take very long to regrow after whipping and also be very slow to grow onto new cottages. I would probably look to find some better spot to move my capital later. If that's is the plan, then settling on rice suddenly becomes a lot more attractive as I don't need the rivers as badly and a faster start is preferred.

Edit: played the few opening turns and I must admit that this is the kind of start that usually would make me generate a new map. No food for capital, no decent food for any nearby city locations, nothing to do for worker early on, 2 annoying AI in your face... And this is monarch so they don't even have any workers for you to steal! I'd beeline BW for chopping, settle the copper and then axerush either Hannibal or Boudi, or both, and then move my cap to one of theirs if I get something better, which I should get because at least there can't be any worse capitals than the one we have.

Gumbolt · Mar 10, 2014

Wow that 1520ad save is a nightmare!! How did you fall so far behind in tech??? Wow.

Your capital needed 4-5 mines. You have cottaged all the plains. Why not the grassland first? It was actually quite a nice hammer city with all those hills. Hammers=wealth/research builds later.

1520ad and you have had 1 great person??? With a decent great people farm you could easily have 5-6 come 1ad. So 1 by 1520ad speaks volumes.

You have 11 pults and 19 HA. All rather out dated now. You don't take a horse archer/sword to a phant/mace/treb fight.

What were you doing up to 1320bc??? That is when you settled your second city. What else were you building for 1000 years? Settlers? Workers?? and 1-2 warriors?

1500bc-2000bc is not unusual for my 3rd city. This start needed 1-2 workers before a settler chopped. Then a axe army chopped. BW was the way here with so much forest.

Fair enough you did attack celts in 400bc but that attack should of been more closer to 1500bc or sooner. On immortal level the Ai would be close to longbows by 400bc.

Overall your starts are just way too slow. Not enough workers/expansion. This snowballs later on when the Ai starts over taking you.

Focus cottages on grassland rivers/flood plains first. Don't be afraid to run 2 scientists in a city early on to build an academy in your commerce city.

Oh and don't always play the poor maps unless you can win comfortably on that level.

capnvonbaron · Mar 10, 2014

Just looked. Those galleys Han is sending aren't really a "surprise attack"... the AI on your continent can and will send stuff on boats once it has already DoW'd you if it senses an easy meal. I moved the trireme over one tile and attacked the galleys on the next turn, sank one, forced the other one to drop its units two tiles away from your city. "Sea patrol" is crap, yes; always fortify on sentry and do the attacking on your own. To answer your Q, it appears Sal is completely blocked by Toku, so if he DoWs you don't have much to worry about besides those pesky wandering units.

I moved a lot of units out of your far-from-the-front cities, two archers from the next city over (upgraded to LBs) and wiped out Han's stack no problem. Changed civics to Slavery and Vassalage (you were running Serfdom?? :nono:

). Switched tech to machinery. Never research compass unless you are isolated and have to beeline optics... the AI will research compass for you and trade it to you cheap.

From here, you could probably whip/chop a killer stack and wipe the floor with Hannibal once machinery is in and you can get some Xbows to deal with his maces. Everyone is pretty much spot on in their observation that your empire management needs some serious work... if you were on top of things its not unreasonable to be fielding rifles and cannons by now. Stick with it though, you will get better with help from the forums! They took my from being a weak Prince player to a strong Emperor player... and I could surely do immortal or diety, I just find those levels more stressful than fun

Libadanda · Mar 12, 2014

thanks for all the reply's!
i learned a lot of this.

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