Getting my ass handed to me in Monarch

[rrhal]

The Chineese are probably way ahead of you. You may want to try to boost your culture near your border and see if you can get some Mongol cities to flip.

 

[Mannu]

I'm stumped as to the best way to proceed with this game. I'm the Spanish (expansion/spiritual) playing at monarch level on a large map.

Fisrt city is in a decent place - water tile with copper, marbel, corn, and pigs with in the city radius and iron, sugar, dye. I have a water tile with 2f,2c so I can discover early tech and still grow. In fact I can win the race to meditaion or polytheism every time.

I have 2 3f tiles I can grow to 3 as fast as anbody. There are pleanty of woods near by - I can cut one or two down with out any real harm.

Unless I play a hard core military early game I get mopped up by Barbarians. I can usually get an early religion in but expansion seems to be very difficult.

What do you do with this starting position (see attached)?

This is what I would do.

Research Wheel > Mining > Bronze Working

Build a Worker and use to connect to the copper square and mine it until Bronze Working is done. Then chop rush a couple of axemen and a settler.

After this I would research Masonry > Polytheism > Monotheism

You should have a good chance to get Judaism still, but if you don't get it its not the end of the world. Research Priesthood and build the Oracle with the marble bonus in a handful of turns. You can select either a religion tech if you didn't get Judaism or else Metal Casting is always nice since it is so expensive. If you researched Pottery while the Oracle is building you should be able to get it.

 

[rrhal]

That's not a bad approach but if you play the game I posted you will find that you miss out on Judeasm. Early bronze working seems to be key to fighting off the barbs.

My best go at this game is going for Axemen and ignoring Archery. I build enough axemen to be proactive about ridding my lands of barbarians.

I built the Pantheon with my marble. went for potery early so I could start building cottages. I didn't get to monarchy early enough so happiness limited my city growth for a while.

 

[Astax]

It sucks thou at the beging because researchign cottages is quite an undertaking which is equal to getting bronzeworking, depending which tech you start with.

Might try it if you got 4 floodplains and you are financial, then make 4 cottages for the start :/ But you'll also need 4 grassland hills.

 

[lances]

The Chineese are probably way ahead of you. You may want to try to boost your culture near your border and see if you can get some Mongol cities to flip.

They are ahead. They were about 300 to the good when I met them, and they've stayed that way ever since, +/- about a hundred points.

I'm in second place, though, and the rest of the world seems to be losing ground, rather than catching up. I seem to have a slight lead in tech. I'm hoping I can translate that into a spaceship win. Madrid is pumping out 500 science/turn, or was. I dropped back down to 80%, after I upgraded to riflemen.

I'm not that worried about the Mongols anymore. They're still running around with Kerchiks, and I'm about to get tanks.