Mastering Monarch - a shadow game

[user330977]

Hello folks,
I am a long-term Civ IV player, on and off since release, and I am looking to perfect Monarch difficulty before moving onto Emperor. I've had one win on Monarch (but it was a bit crutch-y... I was my favourite civ, Willem, and spawned with gold and elephants nearby. My enemies never stood a chance. ) The purpose of this thread is to therefore solidify the skills needed to beat Monarch mode. I am interested in any and all advice, including where to settle and why, optimal early tech paths, best uses of civics and whipping and so on. So, the game itself:

Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Continents, medium (I want to experience a mid/late game rivalry with the other continent. Dominating your own continent is one thing, but now there's another!)
Civ: Native America. A rather sucky civ, I figure if I can win as this sucker, I can win as anyone. I rarely play as this guy, so it's something new. Interested to learn how I can proper leverage his protective trait (if at all) and his philosophical trait (much more useful)
Speed: epic
All other conditions normal. I like to play in German (keeps my language skills sharp ) so I will translate anything where necessary, but if folks are struggling I can switch to English. My start is attached; where would you settle and why, and what would your first order of play be? Unfortunately I don't see any food nearby, and I don't like the look of the vast desert to the west...

Regards
Ita Bear

 

[Jarno]

Hi Ita Bear, welcome to the forums! Good to see you taking the step from Monarch to Emperor, hope we can be of any assistance.
As for the shadow game, advised is to disable huts/events and play with normal speed. And in English bitte .

If you'd like to play this one anyway, I guess there is food on either 2S or 2S1E (these seem to be unforested), so best move would be to settle on the plains hill 1E for the extra city .

Good luck!

 

[user330977]

Hi Jarno

I see your point regarding huts/events; best not to let pure randomness get in the way of the game. That said, I must insist on Epic speed. I've mostly played it for 14 years and it's the sweet spot; I find normal speed just unfulfilling. With that in mind I decided to start again, same settings but without huts. The new start looks promising; wet corn, easy to settle by a river and lots of forests for chopping.

You mentioned settling on plains hill for extra hammers. How great is this benefit and is it always worth settling on plains where possible? Even if one has to move the settler for a turn or two?

 

[Lennier]

I agree with Jarno that the best move is settle on the PH 1E. (Also disable huts/events; standard for shadow games is normal speed/normal size as well.) I'm not sure if there's real food 2S and 2S1E or if they're flood plains. In either case, you don't loose them by moving 1E, just several forests. 2N and 2N1E seem to be forests, but my fog-gazing may be off. The warrior is badly placed to move to help with the decision, but I might move him 1S1W to make sure that tile 1S2W of the settler is really a forest.
[Edit: I was referring to your first start.]

 

[Lennier]

Hi Jarno

I see your point regarding huts/events; best not to let pure randomness get in the way of the game. That said, I must insist on Epic speed. I've mostly played it for 14 years and it's the sweet spot; I find normal speed just unfulfilling. With that in mind I decided to start again, same settings but without huts. The new start looks promising; wet corn, easy to settle by a river and lots of forests for chopping.

You mentioned settling on plains hill for extra hammers. How great is this benefit and is it always worth settling on plains where possible? Even if one has to move the settler for a turn or two?

Move the warrior 1N1W on top of the PH, but I think SIP for this one.

 

[user330977]

Greetings everyone,
taking your advice I settled in place and played the first handful of turns. Settling revealed yet another corn resource nearby. With food sorted, I decided to go mining, bronze working to adopt slavery and make these forests choppable. I have attached a new screenshot with some city locations marked; perhaps you'd like to critique? I have Sury as a neighbour to the east, a nice floodplain river valley to the south and some crabs to the west. What would be your tech order from here?

Kind regards
Ita Bear

 

[SillyGoat]

Hi Jarno


You mentioned settling on plains hill for extra hammers. How great is this benefit and is it always worth settling on plains where possible? Even if one has to move the settler for a turn or two?

When you found a city the centre tile gets either the base yield of the tile or 2 food, 1 hammer and 1 commerce, which ever is higher.

Plains hills have a base value of 0F/2H/0C. By founding a city on a PH you get a 2F/2H/1C city tile.

At first glance this may not seem like much. But it means your worker only takes 12 turns to build instead of 15. This means 3 more turns of producing other things, 3 more turns of city growth and 3 extra worker turns.

Should you always settle on a plains hill? No. But you should always consider it if it is possible and if it is worthwhile given the land you can see and your starting techs.

Other desirable tiles to settle your first city on: Flat plains with Ivory, marble or stone all have a base of 2h.
Food resources on grassland will give you a 3 food city tile but with the exception of dry rice or calandar resources you are usually better off with the improved food resource rather than the boosted city tile.

 

[user330977]

When you found a city the centre tile gets either the base yield of the tile or 2 food, 1 hammer and 1 commerce, which ever is higher.

Plains hills have a base value of 0F/2H/0C. By founding a city on a PH you get a 2F/2H/1C city tile.

At first glance this may not seem like much. But it means your worker only takes 12 turns to build instead of 15. This means 3 more turns of producing other things, 3 more turns of city growth and 3 extra worker turns.

Should you always settle on a plains hill? No. But you should always consider it if it is possible and if it is worthwhile given the land you can see and your starting techs.

Other desirable tiles to settle your first city on: Flat plains with Ivory, marble or stone all have a base of 2h.
Food resources on grassland will give you a 3 food city tile but with the exception of dry rice or calandar resources you are usually better off with the improved food resource rather than the boosted city tile.

Great advice; I hadn't realised the benefits of settling on plains. Plains hills by rivers give 2H 1C; if you settle a city here, your city would get 2F, 2H and 2C?

Greetings everyone,
taking your advice I settled in place and played the first handful of turns. Settling revealed yet another corn resource nearby. With food sorted, I decided to go mining, bronze working to adopt slavery and make these forests choppable. I have attached a new screenshot with some city locations marked; perhaps you'd like to critique? I have Sury as a neighbour to the east, a nice floodplain river valley to the south and some crabs to the west. What would be your tech order from here?

Kind regards
Ita Bear

Any advice on how to proceed from here would be much appreciated. Which cities should I settle first? Perhaps the cow city to found a production centre?

 

[Lennier]

No, you get the higher of the base of the tile you settle on (each of F, H, C evaluated separately) or a minimum of 2F/1H/1C. So settling on a PH (0F/2H/1C) makes the city center 2F/2H/1C. Settling on a riverside PH (0F/2H/1C) also yields a city center with 2F/2H/1C. Settling on flat plains (0F/1H/0C) gives no bonus to city center (still 2F/1H/1C). Settling on a rice tile (3F/0H/0 or 1 C) yields a city center with 3F/1H/1C. But the rice tile could yield 4F (dry) or 5F (irrigated), so it's usually better to not settle on rice (or another food bonus). But sometimes a good option for initial city.

However, settling a city on a riverside tile has two additional benefits: 1) Settling adjacent to fresh water gives a health bonus 2) allows commerce connections via river (rather than using worker turns to build roads to connect cities.) (Once you discover steam power you can also build dikes in cities adjacent to rivers, but that's so far down the road as to not be a significant determination where to settle cities in the ancient and classical era.)

I think you have the BUG mod installed; BUG also includes a dot-mapping feature to help plan out where to settle cities (draws BFCs on the map).

IMHO, commerce and happiness are more important early than a production city. So I'd bring my warrior up north to see if there's any food by the silver. Probably settle crab and floodplains before cow, but I'm not the best player. Cow does secure some land from Khmer.

 

[5tephen]

An exception would be settling on floodplain tile where for some reason you only get 2 food instead of 3.

 

[Qactus]

An exception would be settling on floodplain tile where for some reason you only get 2 food instead of 3.

Floodplains are not a terrain type like plains, tundra or grasslands. They are more like forests in that they sit on top of the terrain and will be removed by settling. On regular maps they are always on desert tiles, but on e.g. Fantasy realm maps you can have floodplains on top of other terrain types as well.

 

[Jarno]

However, settling a city on a riverside tile has two additional benefits: 1) Settling adjacent to fresh water gives a health bonus 2) allows commerce connections via river (rather than using worker turns to build roads to connect cities.) (Once you discover steam power you can also build dikes in cities adjacent to rivers, but that's so far down the road as to not be a significant determination where to settle cities in the ancient and classical era.)

For financial civs, settling on e.g. riverside wine or dye would give a 3 city tile. Plains hill riverside wine would then yield 2F2H3C . Also worth mentioning is the plains hill stone or marble, which would give you a 3 city tile.

Any advice on how to proceed from here would be much appreciated. Which cities should I settle first? Perhaps the cow city to found a production centre?

For your city dotmap it would be best to wait for BW to finish. Even though you don't need copper for SB's sog soldiers, it's always a nice tile to work.

 

[user330977]

Hi folks,
played a handful more turns on this, now at 65/750; I decided to settle floodplain city first as it's food-rich and perfect for cottaging. In terms of techs I went Wheel -> Pottery -> Mysticism, so now I can build my basic granary/sacrificial pole infrastructure. As I've research BW, the Dog Soldier is available to me; I wonder if it will be worth producing a lot of these to take out Sury perhaps? My capital has two corn and decent mines, so whipping and building shouldn't be an issue. In terms of founding cities, do you tend to do granaries first, then monuments, then other buildings as necessary?

In terms of techs I'm thinking Writing next for libraries; getting an early GS thanks to my philosopical trait and there's plenty of food around to support them. No stone or marble nearby and I'm not industrious, so wonders are a low priority. Looks like my continental neighbours are Sury, Brennus and Kublai Khan. A strange bunch to be sure.

Fun game so far, looking forward to more advice!

Kind regards
Ita Bear

 

[user330977]

Hello folks,
played some more of this game and I decided to take a gambit and use my Dog Soldiers; they are my special unit after all. I chopped and whipped a small army and set off towards Sury and the Khmer. I hit the jackpot; his capital was guarded by one measly archer. The Buddhist holy city is now mine. I then marched on his second city, this time guarded by three archers, but thanks to some lucky battle outcomes I managed to capture it as well! Its location was pretty poor (on the wine where my Dog Soldier is standing) so I razed it; I will instead settle that gold city to the east.

My priorities now are to get out more workers and improve my land, settle more cities in the river valley and gold area and try and get Buddhism to spread around my empire for the happiness.

How would you say this game is going thus far?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Lennier]

Good job. Be aware the Dog Soldiers aren't great for rushing. They're weaker than standard axmen (4 vs 5 strength). Their advantages are being resourceless (so you can always build them once discovering BW) and 100% bonus vs melee (vs. 50% bonus for standard axmen).

 

[user330977]

Hello Lenier,
Boy have I learnt that the hard way. my Dog Soldiers were quick to dispatch the Khmer but since then, they've struggled to fend off barbarian raids. I would actually much prefer standard axemen than these guys!
I would really like to take aggression to the Mali now before they become an inevitable runaway. My priority is Construction technology so I can whip some catapults and cripple him relatively early. I shall try upload further pictures shortly.

Kind regards
Ita Bear

 

[user330977]

Hello again folks,
Another update on this game. Man, someone remind me never to play as Sitting Bull again... what a terrible leader! His UU has hindered me instead of helping and the less said about Protective and his Totem Poles, the better. I whipped and built my fingers to the bone to get an army of Dog Soldiers and Catapults and taught this son-of-a-gun a lesson. Despite his impressive tech lead (how DOES he do it???) his defences were poor at best and my Catapults could whittle away his few skirmishers for my Dog Soldiers to clean up. Shortly after I declared war, Mongolia and the Celts did the same; poor Mansa Musa didn't stand a chance! I got the lion's share of the spoils, including Timbuktu, a beefy size 10 capital with Pigs, Rice, Copper and the Kashi Viswanith.

I would have liked to vassalise him but Feudalism is still a few turns off. After that, I can feel my gaze turning towards Brennus...

Kinds regards,
Ita Bear