OK, I moved up to Monarch difficulty a week or two ago, thinking it would be much more challenging. At first this didn't seem true at all. The first game I played I picked Ghandi and went for a cultural victory - I succeeded \o/
Basically I concentrated on religions and getting 3 major culture cities from the beginning. One of my three cities was a GA farm and the other two were my capital and a production city. I started with an early war which brought me up to 8 cities (and flipped another one later to get my ninth) and everything went pretty much swimmingly the whole game. I won just after my first opponents completed the Apollo Program.
The problem is this, I'm not letting myself move up to Emperor difficulty until I can win in a different way, ANY different way would be nice. I tried a few conquest victories with various different civs, but always get stopped sooner or later. It seems that whilst I'm wiping out one of my neighbours, the others tech (with those damn AI monarch tech bonuses!) ahead of me and when I try to attack them they have longbowmen/riflemen/infantry in their cities that I'm not ready to kill with my stack of attackers. The way I build my armies is normally to go for one strong unit (normally axemen, knights, infantry, whatever, but dependent upon my resources ofc) backed up with artillery of some kind. This is really good at taking cities, using the old bombard -> suicide artillery -> mop up technique. I can't however seem to keep the momentum going as my economy is normally in a state after a while (due to WW and support costs).
Oh, and another thing I'm finding really really irritating. When I capture a city (I do raze reasonably often, but probably not as much as I should) then it's culture is completely overwhelmed by the cities left by the AI players and it's doomed to be a third rate city until the AI's cities are razed or captured. If they're captured then it just creates the same problem with the new cities. Is razing cities who culturally stop you working your cities properly a normal tactic? It seems to make sense to me but it involves a whole new attack that may or may not work and either way will be costly.
I could also do with some tips on the best way to play the space race, I'm in a game now (using Asoka) where the space race has just begun. There is only one AI (catherine) ahead of me, although she isn't too far ahead, she has completed all the casing and one of the thrusters I think - I have nearly finished all casings. She is also about 1000 ahead of me in score.
At the moment I'm beelining to robotics in order to get the space elevator, this seems sensible at least. Sadly it also seems like Catherine is doing the same from what I see when I try to trade with her. Although I DO have a great engineer saved from earlier who should help me get half way
What else do I do after this though? Which technologies are most important for the space race? I imagine it's worth getting fusion early, both because the engine takes the longest to build and the free great engineer if i get it first. But doing so would seriously damage my research as I would have to leave so many other things by the wayside to do it.
Oh, and as far as research goes, it's at 100% at the moment with something like -20 a turn and 2000 surplus (god bless organised!). But things are still taking between 8 and 11 turns. From looking at what Catherine has it seems she is researching faster than me (of course she is, she has more points and the AI bonuses on monarch). I've done all the standard things to get better research.
I also don't have aluminium yet, although Wang Kon has 2 and is willing to trade with me (he is about +20 on diplomacy with me for a number of reasons). However he wants a lot of my resources of which I have only one, one of which is copper. Is copper actually required to build any of the spaceship components?
I was thinking that if I got aluminium I could fill a transport full of modern armour and invade catherines continent hopefully taking down a couple of her cities. Is this normally a worthwhile thing to do? I.e would she want peace after I had razed a couple of her best cities or would she just spend the rest of the game trying to destroy me?
Meh, I'm sorry for the overly long post and I know that a lot of your advice will depend on the game. I'll upload a save later if anyone wants. It's just that these are a lot of problems I have been coming up against recently and I can only assume that better players than me have come across them before and can solve them. So do!
Thanks
Deepflow
Basically I concentrated on religions and getting 3 major culture cities from the beginning. One of my three cities was a GA farm and the other two were my capital and a production city. I started with an early war which brought me up to 8 cities (and flipped another one later to get my ninth) and everything went pretty much swimmingly the whole game. I won just after my first opponents completed the Apollo Program.
The problem is this, I'm not letting myself move up to Emperor difficulty until I can win in a different way, ANY different way would be nice. I tried a few conquest victories with various different civs, but always get stopped sooner or later. It seems that whilst I'm wiping out one of my neighbours, the others tech (with those damn AI monarch tech bonuses!) ahead of me and when I try to attack them they have longbowmen/riflemen/infantry in their cities that I'm not ready to kill with my stack of attackers. The way I build my armies is normally to go for one strong unit (normally axemen, knights, infantry, whatever, but dependent upon my resources ofc) backed up with artillery of some kind. This is really good at taking cities, using the old bombard -> suicide artillery -> mop up technique. I can't however seem to keep the momentum going as my economy is normally in a state after a while (due to WW and support costs).
Oh, and another thing I'm finding really really irritating. When I capture a city (I do raze reasonably often, but probably not as much as I should) then it's culture is completely overwhelmed by the cities left by the AI players and it's doomed to be a third rate city until the AI's cities are razed or captured. If they're captured then it just creates the same problem with the new cities. Is razing cities who culturally stop you working your cities properly a normal tactic? It seems to make sense to me but it involves a whole new attack that may or may not work and either way will be costly.
I could also do with some tips on the best way to play the space race, I'm in a game now (using Asoka) where the space race has just begun. There is only one AI (catherine) ahead of me, although she isn't too far ahead, she has completed all the casing and one of the thrusters I think - I have nearly finished all casings. She is also about 1000 ahead of me in score.
At the moment I'm beelining to robotics in order to get the space elevator, this seems sensible at least. Sadly it also seems like Catherine is doing the same from what I see when I try to trade with her. Although I DO have a great engineer saved from earlier who should help me get half way
What else do I do after this though? Which technologies are most important for the space race? I imagine it's worth getting fusion early, both because the engine takes the longest to build and the free great engineer if i get it first. But doing so would seriously damage my research as I would have to leave so many other things by the wayside to do it.
Oh, and as far as research goes, it's at 100% at the moment with something like -20 a turn and 2000 surplus (god bless organised!). But things are still taking between 8 and 11 turns. From looking at what Catherine has it seems she is researching faster than me (of course she is, she has more points and the AI bonuses on monarch). I've done all the standard things to get better research.
I also don't have aluminium yet, although Wang Kon has 2 and is willing to trade with me (he is about +20 on diplomacy with me for a number of reasons). However he wants a lot of my resources of which I have only one, one of which is copper. Is copper actually required to build any of the spaceship components?
I was thinking that if I got aluminium I could fill a transport full of modern armour and invade catherines continent hopefully taking down a couple of her cities. Is this normally a worthwhile thing to do? I.e would she want peace after I had razed a couple of her best cities or would she just spend the rest of the game trying to destroy me?
Meh, I'm sorry for the overly long post and I know that a lot of your advice will depend on the game. I'll upload a save later if anyone wants. It's just that these are a lot of problems I have been coming up against recently and I can only assume that better players than me have come across them before and can solve them. So do!
Thanks
Deepflow
