First Solo Win on Monarch

[OldDude]

After my Monarch Shadow Game, where thanks to everybody that helped me, "we" achieved a Conquest victory in 1280AD. In my first solo Monarch game, I had a Diplomatic victory in 1908AD. Not as good but a victory nonetheless.

For some reason my tech rate wasn't that great but I had a little tech lead early on. When I started some wars, that's when I started to fall behind. I did manage to get 4 vassals, and I adopted Zara's religion to get on his good side since he had the tech lead. My vassals for the most part got to Friendly.

Joao built United Nations and I won the vote. On my second attempt for a Diplomatic victory, I won. I was real glad about that because I think it would have taken a lot of time to get my military ready to take on Zara and Caesar as they had a defensive pact.

Spoiler Screens :

On to the next one!

 

[lymond]

Hey OD ..nice job. I assume maybe that you were not necessarily pursuing Diplo from the start but kinda back into it. Ofc, diplo can always be a fallback option, but to improve dates on Diplo you generally do things to pursue it early and at this level pretty much have to control getting the UN built as soon as possible. You may not have had this goal tech wise. In your case you achieved what we call Diplomation, basically diplo win by vassaling most of the map as vassals must vote for the master.

Your tech should not drop much during war, but it's hard to assess what may have been wrong just looking at late screenshots. Yeah, you will do some whipping in some cities, but your cap will generally remain strong in terms of tech and remain as large as possible.

 

[Gumbolt]

Well done on first win.

It's 1908ad and I don't see many workshops.You should be way ahead of the Ai techwise with all those cities.Workshops/watermills should be taking over here.With workshop/factories and other production bonuses you could be hitting 50-60+ production per city. Converted to wealth/science you can see how science might be much higher.

UN could be down to happiness, land and population. I forget the figures required.

 

[OldDude]

Hey OD ..nice job. I assume maybe that you were not necessarily pursuing Diplo from the start but kinda back into it. Ofc, diplo can always be a fallback option, but to improve dates on Diplo you generally do things to pursue it early and at this level pretty much have to control getting the UN built as soon as possible. You may not have had this goal tech wise. In your case you achieved what we call Diplomation, basically diplo win by vassaling most of the map as vassals must vote for the master.

Your tech should not drop much during war, but it's hard to assess what may have been wrong just looking at late screenshots. Yeah, you will do some whipping in some cities, but your cap will generally remain strong in terms of tech and remain as large as possible.

@lymond you are exactly right. I did "back into it" as it wasn't really my goal. I did struggle a lot with unhappiness early on but overcame that once I was able to get more happy resources online. I need to practice some more to get better on my own on this level to try to move up again. I'm also going to read through the shadow game thread again as well to refresh/remind myself on some tactics.

Thanks!

 

[OldDude]

Well done on first win.

It's 1908ad and I don't see many workshops.You should be way ahead of the Ai techwise with all those cities.Workshops/watermills should be taking over here.With workshop/factories and other production bonuses you could be hitting 50-60+ production per city. Converted to wealth/science you can see how science might be much higher.

UN could be down to happiness, land and population. I forget the figures required.

Hey @Gumbolt, so are you saying at some point workshops should be built over other improvements, i.e. replace some other improvement that's already there? I agree that I shouldn't have fallen so far behind in tech but somehow I did.

Thanks!

 

[Gumbolt]

If your playing the long game then you should beeline communism and state property and look to workshop most improvements. Basically workshops and watermills will offer better returns than most cottages. Even towns unless financial. Maybe keep cottages in your capital? Obviously ditch any that only offer 2-3 commerce. It's a balance between food and maximum amount of workshops. If you then factor in things like mining corp and Sushi you could have 20 cities with 40-50h+ each when you run wealth.

My HE city on a previous game with OF from previous build was showing 300H+ a turn. I was running police state too.So 125% bonus. Plus bonuses from factories/coal plants. They all add up.

If you play your early game right on monarch and keep pushing to grow your empire by 1200 ad you could be taking steel or better from liberalism. (Yes you need to be spamming great scientists for this.) The Ai on Monarch are not that fast tech wise. On higher levels AI get much bigger bonuses and reductions on tech costs. Plus fact they start with more techs, units and a worker by time you reach immortal.

Your 1280ad victory on previous game was so much better than this. Civ 4 is all about land, expanding and squeezing out as much as you can from it. Are you actually running state property here? If so most of your mines should be workshops now. Also unsure why you have no railroad by 1900ad? This is what a hammer economy would of done. Railroad provides extra hammers to hills. You have lots to learn on your late game.

Civ 4 is not a game you learn over night.

 

[AcaMetis]

Do keep in mind that State Property and running corps are mutually exclusive, so if you plan on running a corp your workshops/watermills will be missing a food. Mining Inc. and Sushi can easily make up the difference, though. Also, Railroads provide +1 on Mines, specifically, not anything else.

For a diplo win, though, you want to spam Farms everywhere and grab Biology. Grow your cities as huge as you can so you've got more votes and a big enough pop to be up for election if you're not the one who builds UN.

 

[OldDude]

Your 1280ad victory on previous game was so much better than this.

Well, I had lots of help in that Shadow Game.

Civ 4 is all about land, expanding and squeezing out as much as you can from it. Are you actually running state property here? If so most of your mines should be workshops now. Also unsure why you have no railroad by 1900ad? This is what a hammer economy would of done. Railroad provides extra hammers to hills. You have lots to learn on your late game.

Haha, yeah I know. That's why I'm on this board, trying to learn.

Civ 4 is not a game you learn over night.

You can say that again.

Thanks @Gumbolt for the great info.

 

[OldDude]

Do keep in mind that State Property and running corps are mutually exclusive, so if you plan on running a corp your workshops/watermills will be missing a food. Mining Inc. and Sushi can easily make up the difference, though. Also, Railroads provide +1 on Mines, specifically, not anything else.

For a diplo win, though, you want to spam Farms everywhere and grab Biology. Grow your cities as huge as you can so you've got more votes and a big enough pop to be up for election if you're not the one who builds UN.

@AcaMetis if my game lasts long enough I will always switch into State Property. I've never really played around with corps though so the effects of those are still a bit of a mystery to me.

On the diplo win, I have never gone into a game with that as my goal. I've had a few of them but like I mentioned to @lymond, I kind of backed into this one. If I didn't get the votes I would have been grinding for a domination win as that is usually how I win a game. I've gone for a space victory a couple of times but always got beat by a few turns by the AI.

Thanks for your info!

 

[Halbard]

Congratulations OldDude (coming form an old dude myself!), your post inspired me to de-lurk and register; what a great community!

 

[OldDude]

Congratulations OldDude (coming form an old dude myself!), your post inspired me to de-lurk and register; what a great community!

Thanks @Halbard. Civ4 is a great, addicting, frustrating game. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Agreed that the community here is outstanding. Lots of people willing to share their time and knowledge.

Welcome to the board and I hope to see some more posts from you in the future!