Is all my hope lost??

[bigotry]

This is my first monarch game that I've decided to try and play through. The last game I played completely through was on noble and I'm running into a ginormous problem. Egypt.

*EDIT... By the way, I'm playing as Bismarck (germany)<--someone told me to see if I could play monarch with more than one civ. =| I just picked him because I don't know why.

Hatsheput, that annoying woman with the big lips, has gained a massive tech lead on me because I had to put lots of my resources into funding a war against elizabeth and kublai khan. Both of them now are pretty much useless, Kublai is dead and Elizabeth has two cities left.

Heres the kicker... Egypt is 2000 points ahead of me, they have every tech that I am currently able to research--PLUS MORE! Egypt even completed the appollo program before I took Elizabeths last city on the main land.

If you scroll through my cities you will see that some of them are completely useless and I'm just doing everything in my power to try and gain some momentum in the tech race.

What kind of victory should I try for? Or is all hope lost? Please take a looksy.

 

[bigotry]

erhm... Hello?

 

[Godzilla42]

yes, all hope is lost. She is ahead on research with a much higher GNP. She has more units than the rest of the civs combined(power chart). I'd say the only hope is to get every country to go to war with her(which won't happen) and even then I'd only give that strategy a 1% chance of working.

 

[The-Hawk]

I took a quick look… some initial reactions:

- I truly don’t think this game can be won. Hatty is already building spaceship parts, so the clock is ticking. You are not going to win by culture, spaceship, or diplomacy. So, domination is your only hope, and this won’t happen without taking some land from Hatty (she has 41%, you need 68%). So going to war with Hatty seems like the only option. The problem is you have almost no military, and I’m guessing she is way more powerful than you.

The good news:
- It appears you’ve managed your economy well. You have lots of towns up, so you must have focused on cottages early.
- Based on the names of your cities, it appears you did not overexpand early in the game.
- You whupped up on one of the AI’s and appear to have two of the remaining three under control. Not bad for a first Monarch try.

But, the bad news:
- It does not appear that you have an overall strategy. At higher levels, you need to decide pretty early in the game how you intend to win. If you plan to win by military (domination or conquest), then you should not have so many theatres and temples in your cities. If you plan to win by culture, then you should have three cities that are loaded with cottages and a GP farm. At this late date, it should be obvious to a casual observer what your strategy is/was.
- I would also suggest that you learn to specialize your cities. Depending on the victory condition you are attemping, the mix of cities will vary, but you should think in terms of production cities, commerce cities, science cities, and Great Person factories. It looks to me like your cities are all general purpose. For example, Alpha looks like it could be a very good science or commerce city. But then, why put in a forge, barracks, and Heroic Epic? Karakorum could be an awesome production city, why does it have a library, market, grocery, bank? The bottom line is at higher levels, you can’t afford to spend the time constructing all buildings in all cities… so you must specialize. As an example, Karakorum could have spent all those hammers making military instead of unnecessary commerce buildings.
- Don’t spend time building stuff you don’t need. As an example, I see many aqueducts in your cities. However, most of the cities are not hitting health limits (they are limited by happiness). Why build them? Again, focus on those items you need to achieve your victory condition. I noticed you are building an explorer in one city… yet you already know the whole map.

Bottom line, not a bad attempt, but I think you’ve let Hatty get away from you.

 

[bigotry]

Thanks Hawk... That insight helps alot. I discontinued that game because from what you said--it's most likely a lost cause. Instead I started another game and am currently following your advice of sticking to a certain strategy and specializing cities.

However, in my new game I'm actually playing AS egypt so I wouldn't have to deal with the annoying big lips woman. It's actually going quite splendid, but I think I chose my strategy poorly. What I decided to do was to get a strong military going (btw Creative personality ROX... no anarchy!) and try and take on the second strongest Civ early on [which happens to be china]. Only problem is is that ALL my foreign relations are annoyed with me--Julius, Inca, Musa and of course china, well, china is furious. China is almost dead and I have all my cities covered with decent protection.

I hope to god I don't get gang banged by all of them, especially Julius because hes in first and has large stacks of units roaming around. Right now I'm building up some catapaults so I can sack Beijing and get it out of the way. My temp strategy is to keep going to war with China and taking out their cities one by one, then making peace agreements so I can safely rebuild up an army then take another city.

Take a look if you want, it's pretty good game I think.

 

[murphy54]

yes all is lost

 

[Cam_H]

bigotry,

Now, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I am a humble Monarch-level player, so others who are more accustomed to higher levels may have better reasonings ...

Please find attached my attempt at your game as at 410AD.

My view is that in some regards you have done well, with a reasonable sized empire and plenty of promoted units.

The areas of note however arguably include;

• The placement of 'Charlie'; hardly resource rich and not near fresh water? This city quickly stagnated.
• Why Drama? Not an awful choice, as I ended up gifting it to the Romans, and selling it to Mali for 260 (some would argue that giving tech's to Mansa is just making a problem even worse, but at the time I think it was worth the trade off).
• Christianity? This is the #1 reason you've upset your neighbours, and for what gain? I went to 'No State' and dropped out of 'Organised Religion'.
• You have more pressing requirements than Granaries in cities without bad health problems. More Catapults!
• Where is your tech' tree going? I thought Feudalism would probably be most beneficial, although there's a case for Horseback Riding if you wanted to try Horse Archers - I'm not sure that they're necessary given your UU.
• Gungzhou needed micromanagement - move the worker off the Flood Plains in Alpha, and give Gungzhou some food so it can work the mine.
• A worker at Alpha to remove the jungle would be of benefit, and when Civil Service comes, spread the irrigation. It has a dye resource that could do with a plantation for trade purposes and tile improvement.

As you have noted, Beijing is the real prize here. Not only it is your enemy's capital, it also has two of the best Wonders in the game and is preventing you from accessing an iron resource for medieval units due to its cultural pressure.

In my attached game I have taken Beijing, but have had the Incas declare war on me, and seen Rome expand its empire. Rome will be a problem, but I'd try to get a bit of momentum up before taking Caesar on.

In summary, I don't think that you've done too badly, but attention to food requirements (namely, irrigation and placement) of cities, and greater assessment of your empire's needs before building expensive city improvements would possibly strengthen your game further.

(btw - it's 'Spiritual' that's the 'no anarchy' trait).

My 'two cents' - hope it's of some use.

[Edit: Removed saved game - running low on server space]

 

[SavvyPlayer]

Thanks Hawk... That insight helps alot. I discontinued that game because from what you said--it's most likely a lost cause. Instead I started another game and am currently following your advice of sticking to a certain strategy and specializing cities.

However, in my new game I'm actually playing AS egypt so I wouldn't have to deal with the annoying big lips woman. It's actually going quite splendid, but I think I chose my strategy poorly. What I decided to do was to get a strong military going (btw Creative personality ROX... no anarchy!) and try and take on the second strongest Civ early on [which happens to be china]. Only problem is is that ALL my foreign relations are annoyed with me--Julius, Inca, Musa and of course china, well, china is furious. China is almost dead and I have all my cities covered with decent protection.

I hope to god I don't get gang banged by all of them, especially Julius because hes in first and has large stacks of units roaming around. Right now I'm building up some catapaults so I can sack Beijing and get it out of the way. My temp strategy is to keep going to war with China and taking out their cities one by one, then making peace agreements so I can safely rebuild up an army then take another city.

Take a look if you want, it's pretty good game I think.

1. It's the spiritual trait that gives no anarchy.
2. There is an excellent post on triangle diplomacy in the strategy forum. Follow this strategy to limit your risk of being forced into a multifront defensive war.