hello im looking for some help

[banson]

hi my name is daniel and i been playing this game on bts for 1 month now

i seem to be able to play prince lvl with no real strat ok, i can tech fine make money and be in top 3 scores.alot.. and it seems the enemy civs are not too mean.but i do have some early big wars with them every now and then.

my prob is i thought i was ready for monarch lvl and i play on marathon speed. i try any civ and other traits but what im running into is this..

by turn 300 im soo far behind in tech that they usualy have 7-10 techs more then me.
i also find it very hard to make much money and my tech drops down to 50-60 by that time easy.
i try to have about 5-7 citys by then but they seem to never become a usefull city and dont contribute much.
i only have like 3-4 citys that are in any shape to contribute in any form.

i dont have a army more then 1-2 defenders, i just cant aford it.
i tryed some strats i read about here on prince and it goes fine but on monarch i cant even do much with them.

i dont quite understand how to specilise citys yet cause it seems my citys need every thing and i cant spare not making them from my perspective..

i prolly got more things to tell ut as you can tell im dead last in score with no hope of moveing up even a few ranks by turn 700. and every thing else is going wrong. they uslualy complete notre dame wonder and generaly are ready for gunpowerder by that time..

can any one offer advice or offer to be my tutor please?

 

[kossin]

Try to do a walkthrough where you play a few turns and post screenshots and the save. It's just about the best way to get advice as the game is so complex.

 

[Lacunaa]

I only recently made the jump to monarch so I can only give you some basic advice:

-It seems your commerce cities are not that good. Coastal cities are often good to be commerce cities, other than that you are looking for grassland and river tiles. Floodplains are amazing for commerce cities. Now in these cities you really don't need to build a lot. A granary and a courthouse is essential for every city and other than that I may build a monument if I have no culture in it and library/university/observatory. Coastal cities get a lighthouse of course. If I'm done building these, I usually build wealth. Even if a commerce city only has like 5-10 hammers, it still adds up and will allow you to up the slider.

-Useful techs to support your economy are currency, code of laws(courthouses!), calendar(to hook up commerce resources). My games often consist of an early rush after which I beeline these techs to get my economy back up and running.

-Make sure you have enough workers to make those cottages as early as possible. It's a real waste to have cities work on unimproved land, you could be growing gold there .

Of course, these guidelines are very rough and the game is harder than that.

 

[pigswill]

Monarch level is when tech trading starts to come in useful: research techs that the AI don´t prioritise (beelining alphabet works ok on monarch) and pick up 3 or 4 techs in exchange.
Your cities don´t need every building. At least one city should be a production site for building units.

Maybe have a look at the Monarch´s Cookbook. Play some of the older games from the starting save without looking ahead and then compare at the end of your game to see what the other players did differently.

 

[mjg5591]

I don't play marathon, I play epic. I am a monarch player also. I agree with pigswell about tech trading. When I jumped up to monarch I had trouble. But then I learned from lurking some games that beelining techs and trading to backfill. This helped alot. I usually beeline Aest. and trade for alphabet. Then trade alphabet and aest around to backfill.

 

[Infantry#14]

spam cottages on grassland. tech trading is useful in the beginning before education. Get to currency and build wealth, particularly some mid level production cities that cannot build cottages. I usual make the rapid expansion in the middle age once i setup markets, courthouses and have the happiness from calendar resources to support big population cities. Once you have banks, the money problem should go away. Teching at 60% is okay, just maintain it above 50%. Either do very early rush or wait till the time you have catapults and enemy dont have longbows. Knights are strong vs longbows in medieval.

 

[banson]

ok so before i start my new game, any ideas for rough estimates of what i shouldstrive for.. like how many workers per city and about how many citys for the first 400 turns.? also i see that every one almost sugested getting the usual money techs.. but by the time i can even start researching currency im in big big trouble already. so any advice id like it to be for the pre currency era please.

 

[banson]

oh one more thing, could i get some help on how to specilise citys.. i mean when its early in game and u got 3-4 citys im usualy trying to build every thing in them.. but if i shouldnt be doing it could advice be offerd as to how to set up the early citys before the currency era?

 

[mjg5591]

Check out this guide for City Specialization. Also check out the War Academy. It's where I learned alot about this game.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/cityspecialization.php

 

[0range]

Two words. More workers!

 

[banson]

ok well im turn 310 in my newest game and i tryed out the great wall rageing barbaring trick.. it really put a damper on the enemy civs to the point i feel like i can achive stuff.

i havent really specilised any city yet just getting citys and granerys and some wonders and barrakks down.. got 6 citys.
my capital has built the great wall the pyramids and stonehenge. another city of mine built the oracle. my teck is just about to finesh writeing and ill head over to math and currency after.

my citys have 2 archer defs and i got like 11 workers. and almost out of money. my workers havent really built many cottages so im building few manualy.

oh and i have 3 citys with ok production. can build archers in 5 turns and 1 is just in a poor spot but gots 2 food resources other 2 are just too young atm
my capital was able to start with 5 food sources and 1 gold. i got pretty lucky.oh and a copper source appered in it radi a few turns ago.

about building my citys.. well i really didnt need to worry bout any thing really so i could just send settlers out when i did.

 

[banson]

only thing i did to the map to help me out was make a few rivers but untill this game with the great wall trik even that never helped me before

and not all my citys have the rivers just the 3 that production are ok do

ok just went bak to check nd im at 30% research and making 5 gold now.

 

[Valivator]

A good rule of thumb is to have 1.5 workers per city. And one more thing, don't automate your workers. They will build way more farms than you would ever need. It gets tedious managing them, but you can tell them multiple instructions, for example: my worker on top of an iron resource, i tell it to build a mine, then by shift+clicking on the "route to" button i tell it to make roads to the nearest city.

 

[banson]

i was thnking to my self about some thing. the specilising of citys.. do i want to make my first 3-4 citys a specilist and build with that in mind? like my capital usualy good on sci money and wonders. should i build a early city with the plan on it being a sci, or comerce or prod city.. like one of each? so i end up having a come a prod a sci and a gp city?