Monarch Help

[me_civ]

I just started getting back into civ, and I remembered that I could win at Prince so I tried my hand at Monarch. The first couple games, I got destroyed, so I came here and found some helpful hints such as expand early and war monger your first AI immediately.

In my attached game file, I did just that, destroying my first opponent. I attempted to cottage spam, however I feel like my position is awful. Also, I noticed I had trouble getting great people, how could I go about doing that in this game?

Any ideas on how I could generally improve my game play?

This is on Warlords

 

[Sisiutil]

You did take out an opponent, but it looks like you left it a little late, took a little long, and didn't gain much. In a game where I warmonger (which is, frankly, most of them), I would have owned half of that continent by now.

So, overall, war earlier, with more units, and faster.

Now a few miscellaneous notes:

• You have cottaged spammed--good, VERY good, in fact--but maybe a little too much so. Generally, you should cottage flood plains and grasslands and farm plains tiles--not just because plains tiles lack food otherwise, but so they can chain-irrigate other tiles. Some of your cities are having trouble growing because they lack food. Also, some of your food tiles are not optimal because you haven't chain-irrigated them. That wheat tile south of Istanbul, for example, could be producing +1 food if you'd irrigated that plains tile to its NW.
• Notre Dame--er--why? Was happiness really that much of a problem? ND is a wonder I sometimes capture but almost never build.
• Religion--you converted awfully late. You could have really benefited from spreading Buddhism sooner, accumulating the diplo benefits for longer, and running Organized Religion to help with infrastructure. Speaking of which, why aren't your running OR now?
• Expansion and city placement--looks like you built 3 cities and stopped. You should have kept going--that Carthaginian city on the southeast coast should have been yours. I was wondering why you haven't explored the rest of the globe until I realized you hadn't built any coastal cities. Oops. And Edirne is--aargh--one tile away from the coast! There's also a fish tile to your southwest that's gone to waste, and you could have plunked down a fishing village right on top of those elephants south of Novgorod--you could have had ivory long ago for your war against Russia. You could have even snagged the wheat tile for it (before the war) by loading it up with culture. I've included a dotmap (that one could still argue about) that shows what I think would have been more optimal city placements. Some of them would have depended on Russian and Carthaginian city placements, of course.
• Trading--a minor point, but if you adjust your resource trades and get some new ones going, you would reduce your deficit considerably. Churchill in particular has some GPT that's burning a hole in his trousers.

I hope that's not too overwhelming; Civ is the sort of game that begs detailed analysis. You've got the right idea with cottages, you just need to fine-tune it, then you can focus on other areas of the game and get more fun out of it.

 

[Jet]

I think Edirne is fine. You got the flood plains, and instead of being able to build a harbor, build ships, and work some coast tiles, you have two junk tiles. Yeah, there might be an overall dotmap that works better, but as it is, Edirne is fine.

Yeah, a fraction of your cities need to be production cities. At least one, and build Heroic Epic there. If you use a Great General for a Military Intructor or Military Academy, put it in a production city. Edirne could be a good production city with farms and workshops instead of cottages.

For Great People, Moscow has a ton of food, so hire specialists there. You can hire two scientists right now (or you can wait for it to produce the engineer first). If you had wanted some early, you could have for example built a city to get the fish, built a library, and then at size 3, worked the fish and run two scientists.

 

[obsolete]

The thing I dont like about specialists, is they hamper city growth.

 

[me_civ]

I tried doing what you guys said in a new game... just a couple of things that I had questions about

what is the balance between building early cities versus war mongering? in my new game i built only four cities, but was able to take over some more high quality ones... i think

also, getting specialists...the computer always destroys me on this one and if i'm lucky i'll get a few great generals, is this a problem and what should i do to correct this. i read something about great people factories, do you guys designate one city for a great people maker?

I attached my new game, let me know what you think - thanks for all the previous replies btw

 

[Jet]

Without looking at the logs to try and understand the history of this game in detail --

Looks like you've gotten a few great people. Not as many as one could, but you've gotten a few, that's cool.

To answer your question about great people, if you want a really simple way to ensure that you get some great people, build a city that can work a high food tile (fish, pig, or wheat or corn next to a river or lake), build a library, and at size 3, hire 2 scientists, and never fire them. Keep checking on the city, because if it grows, the computer might automatically fire one of the scientists for you. That is a method which is real simple yet will ensure that you get a steady steam of effective great people starting early. If you have the food to spare, do it in two cities instead of one.

Great Generals are generated differently and separately from other great people. When you win a fight and gain experience points you accumulate points in the Great General-O-Meter, which you can see in the Military Advisor (F5).

Looking at the map it looks like you should keep in mind that every city must be "supported" by one or two good food tiles. Example 1: Ankara should have been built 2 tiles west. The cows and farmed flood plains (and the extra flat grasslands) would allow it to work the 2 gold mines and still grow. Example 2: Nagasaki sucks. One E of where it is would be much better, then it could work the rice and the gold. Nara sucks too, because it blocks the gold and rice from being worked usefully. Ideally, if you can afford the settlers etc., you'd raze both cities and rebuild them with better city placement.

Also, you should take my advice to make some of your cities (at least one!) a production city, with no cottages, only mines, farms (and pastures and work boats etc), and (later) workshops. Build Heroic Epic there (build it somewhere!) All cities need to have high food, but production cities especially need to be high-food so that they can work low-food / high-production mines and workshops.