Divaythsarmour
Adventurer
I started my first game on Monarch a few nights ago. I'm playing as Hannibal on a small map at marathon speed. I was incredibly lucky in the beginning. My warrior received 2 free technologies very early (agriculture and the wheel) from villagers and then another 2 scouts and a warrior (also gifts of the villagers). I finished a warrior in Carthage and then had him rendezvous with the other 2 warriors at the border of my nearest neighbor (Mehmed). Now I have to admit that I had to do a game save and then try four times to get my 3 warriors to take Istanbul, but eventually the odds swung my way. So it was a very good start. I chose a tech path through writing & alphabet to Literature. I did some trading and picked up priesthood. I somehow managed to build Stonehenge in Carthage and the Oracle in my 3rd city, while continuing to grow. I built the Great Library in Istanbul (which was a city with flood plain and river all around it). So I built farms everywhere and started running scientist specialists. I found the barbarians to be very annoying. They kept pillaging my improvements and slowing the progress. I decided "screw this" and I built the great wall in Carthage. I also managed somehow to build the Temple of Artemis. Now I always notice people on these threads writing things like "don't over-build wonders" and I try my best not to over-do it. It seems that in this game, because of the tech path I was on, I was maxing out all of the infrastructure type buildings, i.e. granary, library etc.. and loading up on military units was going to kill my economy as I was trying to grow. So the wonders were really the best choice. So I picked my first war with Louis at around 100BC. I had catapults and elephants. I took 2 of his cities and stopped (keeping my economy in mind). I was the first to Liberalism and chose Nationalism as my free tech. Once I got Military Tradition, I started pumping out the cavalry in 5 of my best production cities. I was amazed at how quickly I got to Steel. It seems that my science capability is "off the charts." I should take a closer look at it, to see why it's doing so well. I did create one science academy in Istanbul and another in Carthage. I've also managed to keep my research slider above 50% most of the time. So once I had a stack of about 6 cavalry and 5 cannons, I invaded my next largest rival (Hayna Caypac). The best method seemed to be to take his nearest city, so that my units could survive his massive counter attack. He hit me with everything but the kitchen sink. He had riflemen, but everything else was knights and such. It was one of those situations where the AI takes 5 minutes attacking you and you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for it to stop, hoping your stack survives. And of course it did. He came at me with 4 more counter attacks, each with stacks of about 8 units. Somehow I only lost 1 cav and 1 cannon. I also made sure to promote my units with medic etc.. so that they would heal quickly. Within the next dozen turns or so, I had taken his largest city in that region. I couldn't afford another night of less than 5 hours sleep and I crashed. So far, it looks like I might be able to pull off a win. Hayna is definitely going down. My other big rival is Peter. He has a very large empire, but is pretty far behind on techs. Another advantage that I have over Peter, is that his country is narrow and sort of wraps around one side of the large continent, of which I will soon own the other side and all of the center. I could probably cut him in two and then spearhead in both directions. It's kind of nice to have some success at this level. I've been learning a lot by reading these threads every day and playing my games at Prince level. I seem to always be able to win on Price, often times with scores of "Ceasar." But it's still a struggle and I just didn't think I was ready for Monarch. We'll see.
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