Missing something on Monarch

[Meanness]

Sorry, this is long, but I'm frustrated. This is part plea for help, and part vent.

Vanilla Civ, standard CE player who dominates prince, but not having a lot of success on Monarch.

I specialize my cities as much as the map allows - usually have one major commerce city cranking out 200-400 beakers, a GL/NE city to crank out GS, and a HE/IW city for troops. The rest are commerce/hybrid.

I play Shuffle map, random leader, with random personalities checked.

Every single game I seem to have some "bad luck" that turns the tide against me, but it can't be bad luck every single game. I must be doing something wrong, but I just can't figure it out. Here's a summary of my latest game:

I end up as Bismarck, and I'm on a continent with Isabella, Alexander, and Washington (sharing a border with all of them.)

I'm able to land-grab some great sites with the usual chop-heavy start. Isabella starts an early war, I take a big city from her and cripple her. She never recovers.

I build the GL, I win the race to Liberalism (taking Astronomy), I win the race to Democracy, switch to Emancipation and build the SoL. All the while I am kissing Alex's butt (we're on Friendly terms) at the expense of annoying Washington. Eventually, Alex has so much land area that he's catching up in the tech race, so I need to expand in Washington's direction. Just as I'm building a stack to decimate him, Washington obliges and attacks me.

I grab Atlanta, and as my troops are healing for the next wave, the "Friendly" Alex stabs me in the back. Now I'm forced to make peace with Washington, because Alex is no pushover. I am able to beat Alex back and even take a border city (which founded Taoism, but no shrine), but the cost of the war wears me down economically, and as Alex techs up to Artillery, my offensive grinds to a halt, so we make peace.

Meanwhile, Gandhi (on the other side of the world, different continent) completes the Apollo Program. As I race desperately to play catch-up (my only aluminum happens to be in the city I took from Alex - happy coincidence!), I am attacked by Alex again. I beat him back, but his bombers destroy my aluminum mine as I watch the messages 'Gandhi has completed SS Casing!' scroll across my screen. No one will accept a bribe to attack Gandhi.

Where did I go wrong? What more can I do, besides grabbing a tech lead, achieving Friendly relations with a neighbor, and build a military powerful enough to win wars and take cities? It seems like I can never go to war without inviting 1-2 other leaders to attack me, and during the inevitable slugfest, some peace-mongering leader on the other side of the world runs away with the space race. How do I get over this hump?

 

[OctavianFlu]

Nuke Gandhi back to the stone age

 

[Sjaramei]

Be more aggressive, land is power. Less building more war!

Sad truth but it's the tactic which you need to do at higher difficulties.
(tech lead doesn't matter when you get enough land, you will catch up before they win space race, the modern techs are costly to research)

 

[vale]

The main thing your summary seems to say to me is that your game went way too peacefully. An early conquest of Izzy and then nothing until post astronomy? Plus you never DoWed anyone yourself? I'm sure you can win such games, but I think it is unnecessarily handicapping yourself.

Eventually, Alex has so much land area that he's catching up in the tech race, so I need to expand in Washington's direction.

This sounds somewhat backwards to me. You have identified the true threat (Alex, his land area and his teching), yet your conclusion is that you need to take Washington down a notch. Admittedly, your risk of getting dogpiled by Washington was much greater, but if you worked at your relationship was there a chance you could bribe him onto Alex with you? It sounds like he wasn't too fond of Alex to begin with so maybe that is not too far out of the realm of possibility.

Ideally around the time the Liberalism race is finishing up it would be nice to be gearing up to finish the domination of your own continent. It seems that you were on the larger and more advanced continent so leveraging this to at least a space race win should have been possible with an early focus towards dominating the continent.

I don't put much stock into having friendly neighbors. The best neighbors are my vassals or dead.

 

[cabert]

vale gave you an interesting point of view
Let me add that :
- pleased is not friendly : if alex had been friendly, he wouldn't have backstabbed you.
- it's not usual for the AIs to overtech you if you really were in the lead. IMHO, you didn't choose a victory condition and teched all the way to it. Did you build enough cottages? It's unlikely to win a space race using a SE, unless you have a large (!) amount of land over the others. Maybe you didn't trade techs in the most efficient way?
- casings isn't very frightening. I did win a monarch space race when America had finished all the casings and thrusters before I even finished Apollo Program. Check out if gandhi even has the techs required to finish before entering panic mode. panic mode is where you declare war on Gandhi, use spies and nukes and whatever it takes to bring him down.

 

[oyzar]

alex is one of the few leaders that can backstab you if they are friendly though with random personalities he might just have been monty!

 

[cabert]

alex is one of the few leaders that can backstab you if they are friendly though with random personalities he might just have been monty!

friendly? no
only catherine attacks when friendly (not even monte does )

 

[axident]

Sorry, this is long, but I'm frustrated. This is part plea for help, and part vent.

Vanilla Civ, standard CE player who dominates prince, but not having a lot of success on Monarch.

I specialize my cities as much as the map allows - usually have one major commerce city cranking out 200-400 beakers, a GL/NE city to crank out GS, and a HE/IW city for troops. The rest are commerce/hybrid.

I play Shuffle map, random leader, with random personalities checked.

Every single game I seem to have some "bad luck" that turns the tide against me, but it can't be bad luck every single game. I must be doing something wrong, but I just can't figure it out. Here's a summary of my latest game:

I end up as Bismarck, and I'm on a continent with Isabella, Alexander, and Washington (sharing a border with all of them.)

I'm able to land-grab some great sites with the usual chop-heavy start. Isabella starts an early war, I take a big city from her and cripple her. She never recovers.

I build the GL, I win the race to Liberalism (taking Astronomy), I win the race to Democracy, switch to Emancipation and build the SoL. All the while I am kissing Alex's butt (we're on Friendly terms) at the expense of annoying Washington. Eventually, Alex has so much land area that he's catching up in the tech race, so I need to expand in Washington's direction. Just as I'm building a stack to decimate him, Washington obliges and attacks me.

I grab Atlanta, and as my troops are healing for the next wave, the "Friendly" Alex stabs me in the back. Now I'm forced to make peace with Washington, because Alex is no pushover. I am able to beat Alex back and even take a border city (which founded Taoism, but no shrine), but the cost of the war wears me down economically, and as Alex techs up to Artillery, my offensive grinds to a halt, so we make peace.

Meanwhile, Gandhi (on the other side of the world, different continent) completes the Apollo Program. As I race desperately to play catch-up (my only aluminum happens to be in the city I took from Alex - happy coincidence!), I am attacked by Alex again. I beat him back, but his bombers destroy my aluminum mine as I watch the messages 'Gandhi has completed SS Casing!' scroll across my screen. No one will accept a bribe to attack Gandhi.

Where did I go wrong? What more can I do, besides grabbing a tech lead, achieving Friendly relations with a neighbor, and build a military powerful enough to win wars and take cities? It seems like I can never go to war without inviting 1-2 other leaders to attack me, and during the inevitable slugfest, some peace-mongering leader on the other side of the world runs away with the space race. How do I get over this hump?

First off, you're doing a lot of things right, with the specialization among cities and at least paying attention to diplomacy.

1. Never consider any AI as a friend unless you have Permanent Alliance on or something. NEVER. They can't be trusted. I know it's unorthodox but my political strategy is to not take a religion (no need for the neg diplo and I'll get Free Religion soon enough), accumulate lots of +diplo, and then bribe the bully civs into attacking my tech rivals. It's also probably wasteful to build IW and HE in the same city; usually people have West Pt with EITHER of those 2 other national wonders, and Red Cross paired with the remainder.

2. SS Casing is nothing. Don't panic. I've won LOTS of games where the AI has an early Apollo and builds the first SS parts. I just yawn at Apollo, because it takes a long, long time to get to Fusion and to build the SS Engine part, so you have a long, long time to beat them back to the stone age if necessary. Or to bribe someone else to do so.

3. AI is terrible at war for a variety of reasons, one of which is their lack of effective collateral damage usage. Mass bombers and/or mass arty can destroy their main attacking stacks (have some Drill tanks to mop up, or lots of units in general, but Drill+Blitz armored units = built to mop up arty/bomber-ravaged stacks) and allow you to march from one enemy city to another with few casualties. Collateral damage + blitzing armor or lots of regular troops, is king. This applies pre-bomber/arty too; cats are super-strong and enough cats with enough mop-up units can take down even gunpowder units, though you'll want to go for trebs, then cannons/arty eventually.

Also, it sounds like you might not be warring enough. Try to have no more than 3-4 cities (4-5 if you're organized) before getting CoL and/or currency, then run over someone to expand to 8-10 cities, building/whipping courthouses everywhere. You can keep going from there and march all over your continent--something that is easiest to do with Praets but which I've done with just swords/axes (have some elephants vs. enemy x-bows if they show up; elephants as bodyguards also works until the enemy discovers Engineering for pikemen). Or you can turn builder and just tech to Liberalism, grab Democracy and Emancipation, and bribe the biggest army on the map to attack your closest tech rival. I pay any price to do that, because that war will stir bad blood that will last the entire game. I also bribe to start wars pre-Lib if someone looks like they're a threat to beat me to Lib. Or sometimes I just bribe to start wars because the other civ isn't asking for much. Anyway, with a good tech lead and 8-10 cities on standard sized maps you have enough land/cities to do whatever you want.

Also you might want to check the Immortal Challenge / For the Fatherland thread where Aelf took Bismarck to a good position so far in his Immortal game.

EDIT: Sorry I meant he took Frederick that far. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=211723

 

[Meanness]

Thanks all for the responses so far. It looks like I need to make a detour on the tech tree to pick up more military techs along the way, and make more of an effort to conquer. I settled 4 cities myself, took one from Izzy, one from Washington, and one from Alex. The last two were never very productive, as the cultural borders were just beginning to push outward. I also culture flipped two of Washington's cities, but they were poorly placed and generally useless.

Is there a certain point in a game where you turn the science slider down and build a huge conquering army? After construction? After CS/machinery? I tend to keep the slider at 70%, which limits the size of my army.

Cabert, you had a few questions, so I'll answer them directly:

vale gave you an interesting point of view
Let me add that :
- pleased is not friendly : if alex had been friendly, he wouldn't have backstabbed you.

Technically, this is correct. I oversimplified a bit in my explanation. The exact order of events was this: One turn I was at "Friendly". The next turn he cancelled our Open Border agreement as our relations dropped to "Pleased". The very next turn, he attacked. I have no idea what caused my diplomatic relations to drop - he listed Washington as his worst enemy, and I was at war with Washington.

- it's not usual for the AIs to overtech you if you really were in the lead. IMHO, you didn't choose a victory condition and teched all the way to it. Did you build enough cottages? It's unlikely to win a space race using a SE, unless you have a large (!) amount of land over the others. Maybe you didn't trade techs in the most efficient way?

I don't know if I had the overall tech lead, but I definitely was the first to Liberalism and the first to Democracy. I was hoping that the extra would buy me enough time to backfill the military techs. I attacked Washington with knights/muskets/cats, but Alex beat me to Chemistry by 5 turns, and he upgraded/attacked immediately.

- casings isn't very frightening. I did win a monarch space race when America had finished all the casings and thrusters before I even finished Apollo Program. Check out if gandhi even has the techs required to finish before entering panic mode. panic mode is where you declare war on Gandhi, use spies and nukes and whatever it takes to bring him down.

I agree that the casings alone aren't too scary, but the war with Alex is hugely draining (he's #1 Power, and keeps beating me to military techs like Artillery, Flight, and Industrialism). Additionally, my only source of aluminum is right on the border of his empire (and is constantly bombed), within the radius of the one city he keeps demanding in order to end the war. I can continue to fend off Alex, but I don't have the resources to hold him off while I'm also catching up in a space race.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Don't know if you could have done it, but you could always grant one or the other open borders and then bribe to attack each other.

good points about the space race, I used to panic too until I realized the AI needed fusion to win.

 

[Tatran]

AK is right, the SS engine is the most expensive part to build. Just make
sure you have enough cash to sabotage.

I've never been attacked by a friendly civ (and I've played a lot of games).
It only happened once in a permanent alliance, the attacking AI hated my
ally. The same thing can happen with vassals.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

The best thing you could have done was to bribe Alex to attack Washington - probably well before liberalism. The thing with the aggressive AI's is to always make sure they are fighting someone - and that someone isn't you. Its well worth a tech or three to do this. Warring slows their tech down and they won't attack you while they are busy with someone else.

You can join in the war to pick up cities - the AI isn't good at taking cities - and you will get further diplomatic bonuses with Alex.

The reason you are a pushover is you don't have enough cities or units. The AI is declaring on you because you look weak to them. You won't be competitive for warring or for the space race with only 6-7 cities.

A better gameplan would have been to build a lot more units in the early game and take Isabella right back to get to 7-8 cities. Bribe Alex to join you in every war (and just to keep him busy). Take Washington out completely or vassalize him in the mid game (if you are first to liberalism thats a great chance to get cavalry and go rampaging). You want to get to 10-12 cities at least at this point. Then you can decide whether to build up your army and take on Alex, or whether to stay onside and keep him friendly.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

the SS engine is the most expensive part to build. Just make
sure you have enough cash to sabotage.

yeah cut the lines to the green goo. that's the ticket. although I did like the nuking plan...

The best thing you could have done was to bribe Alex to attack Washington - probably well before liberalism. The thing with the aggressive AI's is to always make sure they are fighting someone - and that someone isn't you. Its well worth a tech or three to do this. Warring slows their tech down and they won't attack you while they are busy with someone else.

that's what I was trying to say, just couldn't come up with the big words.

AK is right

whoa! Please send a PM to the appropriate parties. @tat -