Moving from Monarch to Emperor

[bob_x]

I have reached a skill level where I seem to win on Monarch more often than not.

But when I try a game on Emperor level, it seems like an entirely different game. The AI civs quickly leap ahead of me, and then I quit the game because it's obvious that I'd have no chance of winning.

How do Emperor level players cope?

 

[·Imhotep·]

Same here, only with Prince and Monarch...

 

[Sisiutil]

I just made the move from Monarch to Emperor myself and I find I'm managing.

First off, you need to gain an early advantage, and that means land. Either block off the area in which you plan to expand at chokepoints, if possible (see ALC game 18b for a version of this) or perform an early rush against a neighbour to gain the territory you need (ALC 18).

Second, jettison something. There may be an early wonder or tech or something you usually pursued successfully on Monarch that now carries too high an opportunity cost. Try playing without it. When I made the move from Prince to Monarch, I pretty much gave up pursuing the Oracle (unless I started with Mysticism and had both marble and several forests available). This streamlined my early tech path and allowed me to direct hammers where they were most needed. You may find once you get used to the new difficulty level that you can successfully integrate whatever you gave up back into your strategy.

Third, don't get discouraged. It's very common to be behind the AI in score and techs for a long time, perhaps even the entire game, especially as you move up the levels. Don't give up. I usually find it takes me until mid-game and even longer before I start pulling ahead, or at least have a chance at victory.

 

[lulu135]

Yeah for me Prince->Monarch is hard. I'm playing my first ever monarch game now where I'm still competitive in the middle ages, after lots of early defeats. The problem is that each level is less forgiving of "mistakes" like building too many wonders, neglecting military, , not building enough improvements, etc. The easier levels give you room to explore the game, "what happens if I build this building", etc. On the higher levels it seems you have to know the mechanics inside and out and know how everything fits together, and most importantly know what you don't need because the AI moves so fast you no longer have enough resources to have everything, so the decision whether to build another worker vs another warrior can have life or death consequences. Also on the easier levels you can focus on your own empire and be confident that you can deal with anything the AI throws at you, but at the higher levels you must have many units exploring the map and know whats going on outside your own borders.

 

[bob_x]

First off, you need to gain an early advantage, and that means land. Either block off the area in which you plan to expand at chokepoints, if possible (see ALC game 18b for a version of this) or perform an early rush against a neighbour to gain the territory you need (ALC 18).

I always seem to get a really lousy land position on Emperor level. Is it my imagination, or is the map generator purposely putting me into a lousy spot in order to make the game harder?

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

You may just have bad luck. I'm a Warlord-level player, and I've been put in spots without resources (even pop resources), and I've had resources up to wazoo! Though at that high level, maybe. I bet not but still...

 

[weasel77066]

I bow to the masters........

How do you ever get that good?

Before BTS I was whipping prince half the time.

Now in BTS I rough through noble...

You guys are pretty impressive!

 

[thomson_2001]

on higher tech levels you have to think very carefully about techs you go for, beeline and tech trading is a MUST. also chop rushing and micromanagement come more into play. and warring early-ish is a benefit as can gain some cities and buildings (maybe even wonders) for free (well the cost of troops). it is a huge jump though i agree.

 

[I tech faster]

I'm slightly in the same situation though I decided to stay on Monarch a bit more to perfect my play style. But with the incoming patch who's gonna improve the IA, this jump might be even harder. With the IA building more units, early rushes may become less effective too. Still, even if the difficulty grows, playing against a challenging IA may bring more fun.

 

[morchuflex]

A few basic tips:

- forget about founding religions. Don't even try.
- Try to play at least one entire game without building any wonder.
- Pay a visit to all your contacts each time you connect a resource, discover a tech or meet someone new.
- Focus on badly needed buildings only, and try to limit yourself to those you have a discount on, at least early on. A city with good food output doesn't need a granary; close to the capital? The courthouse can wait; etc.
- Specialise cities: hills = military or wonder city; rivers = cottages, etc.

That's for starters. The list is non-limitative.

 

[Soneji]

I bow to the masters........

How do you ever get that good?

Before BTS I was whipping prince half the time.

Now in BTS I rough through noble...

You guys are pretty impressive!

I was the same. Warlords and I was happily crushing the AI 3 out of 5 times on Prince and was looking to move upwards.. Along comes BtS and I had to go back down to noble. Started to play Prince level again now that I feel my strategy has caught up with the changes..

I do not know how anyone can play Monarch and above! The AI just stonks ahead!

 

[V. Soma]

Me too: was a Prince player and now I am happy to have a win on Noble

 

[Bino]

I feared the step to monarch, after always winning on prince...well now im confortable at monarch, yet can lose if things go wrong (i play bad). But from my experience even monarch is somewhat forgiving, to win i dont have to micromanage or go qithout mistakes or the odd wonder...

Im not eager to try harder levels, because i'm pressed hard to win if i dont have financial or creative leaders, most of my victories come from having one of the 2...

 

[Chimera]

I seem to have the opposite problem on monarch. I can start off reasonably well, overtaking the AI in score, land, and techs by about 1AD. After that though I just slowly lose ground.

I'll lightbulb/research a tech, but no will have anything to trade for it, so I"ll just sit on it and eventually another AI will grab it and my tech lead shrinks. This just keeps happening until they surpass me.

 

[I tech faster]

The IA keeps on improving his economy and expanding his territory all the time, are you acting the same way ? Once you have etablished a solid economy, you have to consider new ways to make it go further.

For my case, I used to be lazy and always let my economy in the same state. My cities weren't specialised at all and I constructed a lot of useless buildings (especially wonders).

Other important point to consider is the way you trade techs with the IA. It's often better to trade with ******ed rivals than with advanced ones, so these gonna be forced to use their proper beakers to get techs. Some techs are better in you hands only, at least for several turns (like Metal casting, Administration, Democracy... the one leading to key improvements-civics-buildings). In my actual game, I rushed Democracy to get Emancipation and did never trade it so the 14 other IA's get their cities suffer from unhappiness.

 

[Pikkis]

I bow to the masters........

How do you ever get that good?

Before BTS I was whipping prince half the time.

Now in BTS I rough through noble...

You guys are pretty impressive!

I had this kind of backwards. Earlier (Vanilla and Warlords) I was a Noble-player with no hope on Monarch, in BTS I've been able to win through culture on Monarch even in July 1966 (Gandhi, Epic, Huge map).

 

[Indiansmoke]

I recently moved to Emperor from Monarch where I could win most of the times.
My first win on emperor was a space race without hardly fighting a war. I had 1 early when Ragnar invaded even though he was not close to me, but was able to defend and I declared one after rifles and cavalry capturing a few cities including the capital from Mehmed.


I played as HC, founded hindouism for the extra early hapiness & close neighbour relations, had a very good start (3 seafood + lake 3F3C + cow + stone). I was able to block some land with the first 2 settlers and make 6 good cities (not cramped) without war. A 7th city fliped to me around 1400.

A big help was the great wall. I send the great spy to mehmed and was able to steal 5-6 techs early. I was watching his research and I was researching something else.
Also being able to work the 3 seafood tiles + lake with 4 gold each early was massive.

I did some tech trading before Education - Liberialism but after that I was the tech leader for the rest of the game.

My research was constantly above 80% because of slow expansion and loads of cottages (Pyramids, Colosus & Great Library helped a lot).

I wiped early but only once or twice in the capital and adopting representation early, even though I was not running many specialists helped a lot.


I think it was the first time I really apreciated the power of Financial & cottages as I was leaning toward SE so far. Some of my cities worked almost all cottages with 1-2 production tiles. It did not matter capital & military city was doing troops & wonders. Even though I had 6 -7 cities for most of the game, my power graph was top so I had no invasions.

Micromanagement was inportant as well, things like working high commerce tiles when it makes no difference in turns of production, changing civics & running specialists during golden ages, checking often for trade oportunities, managing diplomacy, gifting techs even resources like iron to balance AI power.

In all I think once you get over the start, things are much easier.

 

[Munch]

I'm finding the jump from Prince to Monarch pretty tough, it's about my 3rd or 4th game now and things are looking ok at the start of the Industrial era. In each of these games though, the Dutch have been there and also been the clear leaders; in my current game they are very close behind me in score and land/population, whilst being several techs ahead and having a far larger and more advanced military... scary stuff.

Aggressive tech-trading is a must (so try and get Alphabet quite quickly): you will almost never get a favourable deal, and prior to Currency do not be afraid to make unfavourable trades such as Writing for Priesthood. Once you get Currency you can make 'fairer' deals by getting either yourself or the AI to fill in the gaps in 'beakers' (they're flasks really but hey) using gold, but I believe that the AI will still demand some kind of favourable deal, such as you give them 5% more than they give you?

I agree with some of the posters here that I can start out reasonably strong, and maybe with the help of a tech lead expand peacefully/otherwise. I like expanding towards my rivals, and leaving myself space to 'back-fill' as soon as I can afford more cities - this allows me to develop a large, manageable empire whilst keeping my military on one front if possible. At around the Industrial times though, I start to seriously lag behind in tech and that smug little Willem is prancing around with tanks before I even get together any serious number of infantry! This time though I'm gearing myself a lot more towards espionage, and plan to keep tabs on Willem so things don't get that out of hand. Also, Diplomatic Victory is disabled, so I might actually get to use nukes for the first time!

 

[thomson_2001]

- forget about founding religions. Don't even try.

dont agree here. the money from the is increadible for science and also for relations. try dif approach and go for code of laws . see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=245597

Focus on badly needed buildings only, and try to limit yourself to those you have a discount on, at least early on. A city with good food output doesn't need a granary; close to the capital? The courthouse can wait; etc.

- Specialise cities: hills = military or wonder city; rivers = cottages, etc.

completely agree here. the building this is amazingly ture as specialising often done at lower levels but in higher u MUST only build hwat you need. go to research/wealth much more

 

[morchuflex]

dont agree here. the money from the is increadible for science and also for relations. try dif approach and go for code of laws . see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=245597

I read it, and I find this strategy to be too hazardous. If you're not IND and have no marble, the Oracle is too expensive; and this path means skipping a lot of basic techs that you need to get your first cities going (pottery, wheel, AH, Fishing...).

A religion is always nice to have, but on Monarch+, unless you have some head start (spiritual...), they are best left to the AI.

There is one exception: if I happen to have gold in my FC, I can still be first to CoL even without skipping BW and the other basic techs, because a gold mine simply doubles my research speed. Can work with gems and silver too.