Need help with Monarch win

[Eqqman]

Hello all.

I've been an avid reader of this forum since I acquired Civ IV a short while ago. Boy, what a change from the previous versions! It took me quite a while to win my first game even on Noble difficulty. I'm trying to pull off a Monarch win now but it is proving impossible so far. I've been trying to implement advice collected from these forums but none of it seems to work properly. Below I've listed some of the key points put forward by the Civ IV pundits and the difficulties I've had implementing them. Perhaps I can get more detailed advice on how to make use of them.

Start with 'X' settings...
A lot of guides for the higher settings seem to be played on smaller map sizes with fewer civs. I like to play on huge maps with 18 civs and either Continents or Custom Continents. Should I expect to be able to win on these settings? Typicaly I will end up regenerating the map 10 times or more to try and find a decent starting location which is difficult. For me, 'decent' means I'll have two sources of extra food plus some other bonus resource of any kind. Even if I get such a site, the rest of the map is in pretty sad shape. Grassland is obviously a key terrain feature but I won't have any sites for my other cities where grassland will be 50% or more of the city's area. Is there a map setting that is more friendly for finding ideal city sites?

Steal AI workers
At least one player commented that they never build their own workers. In theory this sounds nice, but I've had trouble following this plan. Often, I cannot even find an opponent before I really need to improve a tile in my capital. Also I have to face the risk of losing my starting unit or the captured worker to animals. And there is no guarantee that I can catch a worker at the edge of the cultural border to capture him in the first place. What are the 'never make my own workers' doing? Just constantly streaming out Warriors until they manage to capture a guy?

Fight an early war
Lots of articles detail how an AI Civ is wiped out before the AD years. If you don't have a Civ with an early UU, such as Egypt/Inca/Rome/Persians, how do you pull this off? Without this you are dependent on finding copper which is no guarantee. Plus, even if you have copper, it takes time to build up a stack of Axemen. When you only have a handful of cities yourself, this takes far too long. I've also tried going for a fast medieval unit, but the AIs always appear to beeline for Feudalism, which takes far less time than getting Macemen or Knights. If you don't have access to ivory & horses, I don't see how you can get a military advantage over the AI until you hit gunpowder which is obviously far too late in the game for an 'early' war. As a related note to this and map settings, are you required to play at Epic or Marathon to win the higher levels? I'm getting the sense that this is the only 'fix' for maintaining tech leads.

Cottage spam
I'll admit I've done better trying this, but it hasn't worked out all that well. Firstly, the maps I get usually don't allow me to have cities with at least 50% of their tiles or more working self-supporting cottages. Cottage proponents also highlight rapid expansion. I find this totally impossible for two reasons: Barbarians and maintenance. When I expand quickly I often can't defend myself from the Barbarians, or if I do, then I've been slowed down enough that I'm behind the AI. Some people point out that you can always pull back into your cities for easy defense, but it is not worthwhile to allow the Barbarians to pillage your improvements. You're forced to spend Worker turns just getting back to where you were instead of growing, and if you're relying on cottages it's worse since you can't afford to lose the development time to grow them to towns. Some folks point out that rapid growth will push out your borders so that Barbs can't appear, but I haven't found this to be the case. This advice seems more applicable to smaller maps where you will quickly meet the AI borders and thus wipe out the areas where they can pop up. But often I'm too far away from AIs for this. It's not infrequent to have 4-5 Barbarians pop up in the same turn when I'm trying to do the rapid expansion in a stage where all I have are Warrirors guarding things as I either don't have copper or didn't get Archery since Archery isn't on the tech 'path' I've been recommended to follow. Barbarians have been so frustrating that I'm tempted to turn them off, but I don't like the idea of knowing that there is a part of the game I can't handle. Even the animals are annoying since it's a guarantee that my first unit will be killed before I've even found my first opponent, especially on games where I'm trying to make a worker first.

Maintenance is also devastating. On Normal speed 1.61 patch it takes 8 cities to produce the Forbidden Palace/Globe/Oxford. So you would think that the idea is to grow to eight cities as fast as you can to get these buildings up. But when I'm trying the rapid expansion plan I'm losing too much money so my science rate goes down to nearly zero so I fall behind in tech, when the whole idea was to get ahead in tech. I've actually done better playing Monarch OCC games tech-wise. The lesson I've been getting from my OCC games seems to be that is is far better to develop a smaller set of cities than to grow.

Another problem I have with the cottage plan is that it seems to be geared towards having the Pyramids so I can buy units. When I can't buy units, then I'm far too behind militarily since I've been focused on making cottages and my cities have little production. Democracy is far too late to try and come back. What do I do when I fail to get the Pyramids out?

Do 'X' slingshot
I find most of these impossible to pull off. I've never been able to beat the AI to Liberalism and the earlier ones are challenging. I can manage to get CoL via the Oracle but usually it involves screwing myself by not getting important techs like BW or even Agriculture in order to pull it off. Using the Oracle's GP to start on CS seems like a greatidea except for the fact that I'm not allowed to research Masonry. This means I can't speed up getting the Pyramids with any nearby stone I might happen to have. These early slingshot strats seem to demand having an Industrious civ so I can be sure to get these requisite Wonders out. Am I off base on this? What are the backup plans when you're not first to CoL or something else you were rushing to build? The author of the Catherine Cottage Spam strat claimed that he pulled it off on Monarch but I'm not sure how this can be done since I would expect him to either be eaten alive by Barbarians, or be too far behind in tech by the time you can get Communism to pull off a win. As a related technology discussion, numerous people suggest learning techs that the AI is slow to acquire to maximize your trading benefits. But how do I find out what those are? I'm assuming Alphabet & Paper fall into this category since the posters explicitly mention those. What are the others?

Use diplomacy
The benefits of getting the AIs to war with each other are obvious. The problem is I can't seem to get one started early enough. Even when I switch religion to match my neighbors, it takes far too long to get somebody up to Friendly to start a war. Then I'll check the relations menu and find out that the Civ they have the worst relations with is only down to Annoyed, often not enough to start a war. Even more frustrating is to have a Declare War option appear in white, but the AI won't take the deal no matter what I offer, even if it is the maximum allowed. If the AI won't take a deal, why was the option in white? As another amusing anecdote, I had one game where I could not persuade Tokugawa to delcare war even after I offered him 5 techs. But on a whim I clicked the request to have him do it for free and he accepted! So clearly there are nuances to diplomacy I still don't understand. Giving away techs for war sounds like a good plan, but often I'm doing well to be even one tech ahead of a powerful AI player. If I give my tech away to improve relations, I have no barganing chips left to start a war. What are the ideas for getting wars started on the cheap? Also, diplomacy seems to conflict with the Worker stealing strategy I've already mentioned. If my closest neighbor is Hatshepsut, and I steal a worker or two or a city, I've now screwed any future relations with that Civ and possible any other Civs who were friends of hers. How do I reconcile early aggression with long term diplomacy?

Whew! That's a lot to get off my chest, but I think I've covered all my frustrations. I now leave my fate in the community's capable hands.

 

[Sisiutil]

Goo goo g'joob yourself, and welcome to CFC, Eggman. Can I be the Walrus?

I can't comment on everything since I don't play on Monarch myself. Can I just ask--you refered to winning on Noble; did you feel like you mastered Prince before moving up to Monarch? I'm on Prince myself and just starting to feel ready for the jump...

Stealing workers: I myself find stealing workers to be opportunistic, not a sure thing. The AI often seems on to me and has a Warrior or Archer guard the Worker once I start sniffing around. If you get lucky, the worker may not survive the trip back to your territory, but at least you've hurt a competitor. I only build a few workers to begin with, then capture most of my additional ones when I start a war in earnest and take them from captured cities.

Fight an early war: if you bee-line to Bronze Working while your first couple of units explore, and focus on getting out a settler or two, you should be able to find and settle near copper. Even if it's a less-than-ideal city site, it's worth it. Yes, it takes time to build those first few Axemen, especially when you need the first few for city defense and barb-whomping, but I've always managed to get there. A half-dozen Axemen are usually sufficient to take cities with 20% defense or less and a 2-3 Archers for defense.

If you don't have any copper, try Animal Husbandry for Horses, then harass the enemy with Chariots--lots of them, they're cheap--until you research Iron Working and find that. Or research Archery and be expansive/defensive until you finish IW. No Iron? Go for Horseback Riding. No copper, iron, or horses? Dude. You're sunk. Restart.

Cottage spam: the true cottage spam strategy requires picky micromanagement, a creative civ, and, in my opinion, a lot of luck with terrain and barbs. I've never pulled it off properly. I usually go for "cottage spam lite", where I put cottages on all flood plains and grasslands, farms on plains, mines on hills. Works so far.

As for finding a lot of grassland--it's hiding beneath the jungle. But I usually use a former jungle area for a GP farm.

Slingshots/wonders: On Prince, I've pretty much given up on the Pyramids. They're prohibitively expensive, and I imagine this would be worse on Monarch. And the later government civics are not that useful early on. Representation is overrated, Monarchy/Hereditary Rule is underrated. I find it works very well until I research Constitution for Representation on my own. Stonehenge and the Oracle are definitely do-able if you give the 'mids a pass. But if you've got stone, you're Industrious, and you have other cities capable of churning out units, settlers, and workers, then maybe give them a shot.

Diplomacy: I've never tried to get the other civs to war on one another early, and I'm not surprised it's difficult. Unless you share the same religion, they're generally "cautious" for a very long time. And with some civs it's of dubious value anyway; Gandhi, Mansa, and Cyrus, for example, are not effective allies, in my experience. In most wars, I expect to go it on my own. I usually pull in an ally when I'm in a building phase and don't want a war just yet.

Hope this helps...

 

[Nares]

Well, I think Sisiutil covered everything you asked about. Read up on the ALC games he hosts for more analysis more incorporated into actual gameplay. It seems you've read the articles and threads on this board, but, given that most lack and real application to actual gameplay (very few referrence specific instances, fewer still support with screenshots), I can see why it's hard to apply what you read to what's going on in the game. ALC is nice because, as you read it, you can apply it. You also get the chance to see Sisiutil apply it.

The one thing I wanted to touch on is the following:

And the later government civics are not that useful early on.

Police State, Police State, Police State. Incredibly expensive to run (makes you really enjoy Organized), but of all the options opened up by The Pyramids, this is the strongest. Though I agree, they're still incredibly cost prohibitive to build, and probably not worth the trouble nine out of ten times.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

One thing you are doing wrong is buying units with Democracy - its incredibly inefficient in the early game. Better to use Slavery and pop rush units or chop trees.

I would really suggest going without the Pyramids - it seems to be messing up your game.

There aren't any sure-fire strategies on Monarch - its really a matter of maximising the traits of your leader and your starting position. In general you try and look for a synergy where you can catapult ahead in one area.

Eg - Bronze + agressive + close opponent = early war
Philo + Stone = Pyramids + Representation + specialist economy
Financial + floodplains = cottage spam + oracle + CS slighshot + very powerful capital

 

[ownedbyakorat]

I just got to the point where I feel I've mastered Monarch level - I play random civs and beat it pretty much every time, barring a really bad starting position. So I'm probably in a good position to answer your questions, I had the same issues not long ago.

Starting with X settings - screw that. A good player should be able to deal with any settings. Don't turn your barbs off or make custom maps designed to engineer a win, you won't get any better that way.

Steal AI workers - I haven't had much success with this. If a golden opportunity comes along, go for it, otherwise don't waste your time - you have more important things to do with your units.

Fighting an early war - if you're going to do this, you have to do it all the way. Your entire civ should be dedicated solely to pumping out units until you are assured of a win. You should know where the enemy is. A good rule of thumb is that you want two axemen for every archer defending a city before you attack. Use slavery/pop rushing to get the units out fast enough, and forget about developing your cities until the war is effectively over. Your aim should be to eliminate an AI entirely and claim his capital, which is likely a better city site than any but perhaps your own. Ideally your opponent is founding religions and building wonders and infrastructure for you.

Cottage spam - lots and lots of cottages are great! Cottaging up tiles that you can't get people to work, however, is a total waste of time. Choose your cottage building based on which cities actually have the pop to work them.

Maintenance - Keep your civ to 3-5 cities tops before Code of Laws. Raze conquered cities except capitals and holy cities. Whip population that doesn't have improved tiles to work, that will keep the ones who are working tiles at maximum efficiency, and will keep your maintenance costs low.

Slingshots - Ignore them. In fact, ignoring wonders entirely will probably improve your game immensely, you'll build solid civs instead of needing a crutch like a slingshot.

Diplomacy - I haven't the skills of the master diplomats, so my primary goal is not to be the #1 enemy of any AI. If I am, I aim to kill that AI. If I can't, I build enough of an army that the AI doesn't find me appetizing.

 

[Eqqman]

I just got to the point where I feel I've mastered Monarch level - I play random civs and beat it pretty much every time, barring a really bad starting position. So I'm probably in a good position to answer your questions, I had the same issues not long ago.

Starting with X settings - screw that. A good player should be able to deal with any settings. Don't turn your barbs off or make custom maps designed to engineer a win, you won't get any better that way.

As a case in point, I just had to give up on a game where I was slaughtered as usual. My first unit was killed by an animal (typical) so my early exploration was stunted. By the time I got a second city going, it was close to 2000 BC and the Barbs started showing up. Even though I only had 2 cities and one of them was coastal, the Barbarians would not stop spawning. For a while I had 3-4 Barbarians in my land every single turn. Needless to say my growth was stunted and by 1 AD I only had 3 cities and was totally hemmed in by AI civs, with nothing explored more than a few tiles beyond my borders. One of my immediate neighbors was Montezuma who promptly declared war on me. Even though I had plenty of units from fighting off the Barbs, they were all Warriors and Archers that were no match for his Jaguar Soldiers and Chariots. Not even my one city on a hill behind walls and a river was safe. Even though I had finally hooked up iron, I'd had to whip so often to fight off the Barbarians that nothing was left to get me decent units to fight off the Aztecs. I just don't see how decent players are exploring, growing, fighting, and building all at the same time without cooking the game- i.e., giving themselves good starts, playing on a really slow speed to limit AI tech growth, or playing on a small map to have easy AI access, or turning off the Barbarians, etc.

One mistake I might have made, was building Work Boats to hook up the three seafood resources near my capital. My plan was to have a site to quickly keep churning out Workers and Settlers, but I had to spend so many whips on troops I never got around to doing that. The only part of my plan that was working was collecting the commerce from the seafood since I was English, I was keeping up with the AI and might have started pulling ahead if the constant attacks hadn't stunted my growth.

To answer the question of the first responder, I did get to the point where I was winning all the time on Noble- and was getting pissed off that even a win before 1900 was ranking me in the Dan Quayle - Warren Harding range. I figured you needed to have a higher setting to earn a better score so I went to Prince and earned a win as the Romans. Of course, in that game the settings were certainly cooked- I played on the earth map so there were plenty of weak opponents nearby and Barbarians weren't much of a problem. I shudder to think what it is like playing 'Raging' Barbarians, since the activity that is usual in a Monarch game is already at what I would call 'Raging'.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

Your experience is exactly why I abandoned my previous disdain for archery when I moved up to Monarch, and now make it among my first 4-6 techs to research. While barbs will make your life hell with warriors only, they bounce right off of properly positioned archers. Often my first three units produced will be a worker and two archers - it makes a world of difference in being able to control your own destiny, should you not be among the fortunate few who have copper in their capital.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I play on Monarch and win fairly consistently. I still avoid archery - either axes or chariots make better defenders and get useful promotions for your later wars. On a normal map with sea (ie not lakes or highlands), you can manage barbs better by:

- Keeping warriors on hill+forest squares away from your cities. AI archers and warriors will normally lose to a warrior who is entrenched like this. After a couple of wins you can add promotions that make the warrior really hard to dislodge. (Except of course for barbarian axemen - they are the only barbarians I really fear). Finding the likely barbarian routes and getting a few warriors around to throw back the fog of war and intercept barbarians before they can plunder anything is key. They will target your warriors if they are away from the city - let them come to your forested mountaintop fortress.

- For your scouts and warriors out scouting, try to travel on hills and forests where possible. They get an edge if attached and can hopefully get a couple of promotions. Once warriors get the level 2 forest promotion they become awesome scouts.

- If you have two cities - all I am likely to have until I have a fairly strong military - then a road between them is an excellent place to park a chariot or warrior that can quickly get to either city when they are in trouble.

- If you can get bronze then axemen are by far the best defender. You need fear nothing for a very long time. An axeman plus a warrior in both cities plus a reserve axeman on the road in the middle is usually enough for me until I decide to go to war.

- If copper isn't around, then I still avoid archers unless I also lack horses, in which case its a gamble on whether I should go for ironworking or archery. Normally I won't settle my second city until I know I can use it to hook up copper, iron or horses. I've yet to encounter a game where I didn't have access to at least one of these.

- Your cultural boundaries and natural boundaries such as mountains and sea play a big part too. If you can set yourself up so that barbarians come along a predictable route then it is much easier to defend and conduct the defense well away from your capital so that you can build a backup defender if a roll goes against you. You need a strategy to build culture quickly in your second city - either a religion if you founded an early one, an obelisk or getting a library in early. Or you could be creative.

 

[Elrohir]

I just won my first conquest victory on Monarch today, so maybe I can help you a bit. (As the Romans, on a small map, and at 1160 AD, granted, but it was a Conquest victory on Monarch. I'll take what I can get )

First, if it took you awhile to get a win on Noble, the jump to Monarch might be a bit premature. I got Civ4 in December, and as a veteran of Civ3 I started on Noble, and worked my way up through Prince, not moving up until I'd won at least a couple victories on each level, and being satisfied that I had gotten good enough to keep going up. Did you play on Prince? Skipping a level entirely could be pretty painful; the playing field is effectively even on Noble, while on Prince and above the AI get huge bonuses. I'd recommend playing around on Prince for awhile before jumping to Monarch, but it's your call.

Start with 'X' settings...
A lot of guides for the higher settings seem to be played on smaller map sizes with fewer civs. I like to play on huge maps with 18 civs and either Continents or Custom Continents. Should I expect to be able to win on these settings? Typicaly I will end up regenerating the map 10 times or more to try and find a decent starting location which is difficult. For me, 'decent' means I'll have two sources of extra food plus some other bonus resource of any kind. Even if I get such a site, the rest of the map is in pretty sad shape. Grassland is obviously a key terrain feature but I won't have any sites for my other cities where grassland will be 50% or more of the city's area. Is there a map setting that is more friendly for finding ideal city sites?

Let's put it this way: It's easier to win, particularly with a Conquest victory, on smaller maps. Less land to conquer means less AI to fight and a smaller headache. Depending on what Victory Type you're shooting for, you may want to knock it down to Standard size or below. (If you're aiming for Diplomatic, or you just want to survive, then it doesn't matter as much, but a smaller map would probably still be easier)

Cottage spam
I'll admit I've done better trying this, but it hasn't worked out all that well. Firstly, the maps I get usually don't allow me to have cities with at least 50% of their tiles or more working self-supporting cottages. Cottage proponents also highlight rapid expansion. I find this totally impossible for two reasons: Barbarians and maintenance. When I expand quickly I often can't defend myself from the Barbarians, or if I do, then I've been slowed down enough that I'm behind the AI. Some people point out that you can always pull back into your cities for easy defense, but it is not worthwhile to allow the Barbarians to pillage your improvements. You're forced to spend Worker turns just getting back to where you were instead of growing, and if you're relying on cottages it's worse since you can't afford to lose the development time to grow them to towns. Some folks point out that rapid growth will push out your borders so that Barbs can't appear, but I haven't found this to be the case. This advice seems more applicable to smaller maps where you will quickly meet the AI borders and thus wipe out the areas where they can pop up. But often I'm too far away from AIs for this. It's not infrequent to have 4-5 Barbarians pop up in the same turn when I'm trying to do the rapid expansion in a stage where all I have are Warrirors guarding things as I either don't have copper or didn't get Archery since Archery isn't on the tech 'path' I've been recommended to follow. Barbarians have been so frustrating that I'm tempted to turn them off, but I don't like the idea of knowing that there is a part of the game I can't handle. Even the animals are annoying since it's a guarantee that my first unit will be killed before I've even found my first opponent, especially on games where I'm trying to make a worker first.

Maintenance is also devastating. On Normal speed 1.61 patch it takes 8 cities to produce the Forbidden Palace/Globe/Oxford. So you would think that the idea is to grow to eight cities as fast as you can to get these buildings up. But when I'm trying the rapid expansion plan I'm losing too much money so my science rate goes down to nearly zero so I fall behind in tech, when the whole idea was to get ahead in tech. I've actually done better playing Monarch OCC games tech-wise. The lesson I've been getting from my OCC games seems to be that is is far better to develop a smaller set of cities than to grow.

Another problem I have with the cottage plan is that it seems to be geared towards having the Pyramids so I can buy units. When I can't buy units, then I'm far too behind militarily since I've been focused on making cottages and my cities have little production. Democracy is far too late to try and come back. What do I do when I fail to get the Pyramids out?

OK, first things first: Barbarians. They're a pain. Get used to it, they're annoying, and they aren't going to leave you alone. The only way to deal with them (Short of turning them off) is to kill their units, burn every city of theirs to the ground, and set up fogbusters on forested hills outside of your cultural boundaries.

Basically, you need to get Axemen as soon as possible. If you don't have copper, get Iron Working right away. If you don't have either copper or iron, you're probably screwed, but you can give it a shot anyway. If you'll like me, you'll rediscover the usefulness of Archers - they don't require resources, and they're cheaper than Axes or Swords. But they are useless for conquering. Use them to defend your cities, and to fight the Barbarians until they get Axemen, but once you see the Axemen invading, there's little you can do but fight back with your own Axemen. It's possible to beat them back with Archers while you hurry a city to some copper, and hook it up, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is tough. If you want to give it a go, my advice is simple: Use the terrain (IE, forested hills) and get Archery. Having pottery is great; but it's better to have a Drill 2 Archer defending your city than a cottage, when push comes to shove. Worry about the cottages later; they won't do you any good dead.

Now, as for maintenance: Don't be afraid to drop your science when you must. Sometimes there is just no way around it, no matter how much you don't want to. But keep in mind, you're goal is to keep it up as high as possible, 100% if you can. Try and get CoL as soon as possible, either through trading or researching it yourself. (The Oracle slingshot is very handy) There really isn't much else to say; get Courthouses as soon as possible, and build some cottages to net you extra gold. And don't overexpand; 8 cities is probably too much to start off with. Depending on the map size and terrain, 3 or 4 well placed cities are probably good enough.

Barbians can be your friend here: Half a dozen Swords pillaging a barbarian city can keep your science up there for another couple turns. If you're cities aren't doing anything else, pump out military, and go kill some barbarians.

Do 'X' slingshot
I find most of these impossible to pull off. I've never been able to beat the AI to Liberalism and the earlier ones are challenging. I can manage to get CoL via the Oracle but usually it involves screwing myself by not getting important techs like BW or even Agriculture in order to pull it off. Using the Oracle's GP to start on CS seems like a greatidea except for the fact that I'm not allowed to research Masonry. This means I can't speed up getting the Pyramids with any nearby stone I might happen to have. These early slingshot strats seem to demand having an Industrious civ so I can be sure to get these requisite Wonders out. Am I off base on this? What are the backup plans when you're not first to CoL or something else you were rushing to build? The author of the Catherine Cottage Spam strat claimed that he pulled it off on Monarch but I'm not sure how this can be done since I would expect him to either be eaten alive by Barbarians, or be too far behind in tech by the time you can get Communism to pull off a win. As a related technology discussion, numerous people suggest learning techs that the AI is slow to acquire to maximize your trading benefits. But how do I find out what those are? I'm assuming Alphabet & Paper fall into this category since the posters explicitly mention those. What are the others?

Generally, getting the Oracle is very difficult unless you're Industrious, or have marble, or both. If you think you can though, realistically, then go for it. As for being screwed over because you researched Priesthood first, you have to balence. It does you no good to get the Oracle and CoL if you have one Size 2 city, a warrior defending it, and a couple Barbarian Axemen are coming in for a party. It's really dependant upon the situation; balence is the key. I wish there was some overarching simple rule for me to tell you about what to research first to get these advantages, but it doesn't exist, sorry.

Use diplomacy
The benefits of getting the AIs to war with each other are obvious. The problem is I can't seem to get one started early enough. Even when I switch religion to match my neighbors, it takes far too long to get somebody up to Friendly to start a war. Then I'll check the relations menu and find out that the Civ they have the worst relations with is only down to Annoyed, often not enough to start a war. Even more frustrating is to have a Declare War option appear in white, but the AI won't take the deal no matter what I offer, even if it is the maximum allowed. If the AI won't take a deal, why was the option in white? As another amusing anecdote, I had one game where I could not persuade Tokugawa to delcare war even after I offered him 5 techs. But on a whim I clicked the request to have him do it for free and he accepted! So clearly there are nuances to diplomacy I still don't understand. Giving away techs for war sounds like a good plan, but often I'm doing well to be even one tech ahead of a powerful AI player. If I give my tech away to improve relations, I have no barganing chips left to start a war. What are the ideas for getting wars started on the cheap? Also, diplomacy seems to conflict with the Worker stealing strategy I've already mentioned. If my closest neighbor is Hatshepsut, and I steal a worker or two or a city, I've now screwed any future relations with that Civ and possible any other Civs who were friends of hers. How do I reconcile early aggression with long term diplomacy?

It sounds like you're on the right path. But in addition to religion, if you're trying to cozy up to people, don't hesitate to join in their little crusades, or give them a gift. They'll more than likely reciprocate later. But be careful not to give gifts to people you plan on killing anyway.

Stealing a worker can be a good strategy, but I don't use it myself. If you're going to use Haptshetsut to kill Monty later on, stealing her worker might not be the greatest idea. But if you plan on wiping her out once you hook up some copper, snagging one early could be a good plan. Once again, it's really dependant upon the situation.

Woah, that was a long post. I hoped that helped at least a little bit. Don't give up though; it can be frustrating, but it's an awesome game.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Re other problems:

- First unit killed by an animal - you need to build another warrior and keep scouting the immediate area at least. There is usually enough time for me to build a worker, then a warrior and then another warrior before the barbarians start to arrive. The second warrior starts scouting also. If you end up losing both, thats bad luck - by then you should at least know the resources in your immediate area.

- Workboats at the start - the problem with workboats is that they take a long time to build and get consumed. I would be wary of building a lot of them unless you are pop-rushing them - ie using a high food start to rush even more food might work. If you build them the slow way, then its going to cost you too many turns. Generally I will try and get my first seafood resource up quickly but delay the others and get workers into play.

- Going from noble to monarch. It sounds like you jumped up two levels. Prince->Monarch is hard - harder than Noble->Prince. I would make sure you have Prince mastered before Monarch.

- Starting near Monty - thats tough. It sounds like the number of barbarians you had was a lot more than normal also. It suggests that your start was slow - on Monarch the first turns are critical - you need to optimize everything and chopping and pop-rushing are very helpful. You don't have time to do everything. It might be useful to go back through the early turns and see what could have helped you get up and running quicker. Perhaps pop-rushing a granary so you could then rush the work boats and get them out quicker. Perhaps chopping a settler to get the second city established quicker and beating the AI to a copper/horse site. I find on Monarch I have to plan everything carefully and discard many things I'd like to do but which aren't essential right now.

 

[Sisiutil]

To answer the question of the first responder, I did get to the point where I was winning all the time on Noble- and was getting pissed off that even a win before 1900 was ranking me in the Dan Quayle - Warren Harding range. I figured you needed to have a higher setting to earn a better score so I went to Prince and earned a win as the Romans. Of course, in that game the settings were certainly cooked- I played on the earth map so there were plenty of weak opponents nearby and Barbarians weren't much of a problem. I shudder to think what it is like playing 'Raging' Barbarians, since the activity that is usual in a Monarch game is already at what I would call 'Raging'.

Ah. Actually, you can get reasonably high scores on the lower levels. The biggest bonus you get in your adjusted score at the end is for finishing early. The sooner you win, the higher your score, generally; this is a huge change from previous versions of Civ. I was winning on Noble consistently in the late 1900s but only recently beat my top score--a Warlord level game I won in 1936!

I would suggest going back to Prince for a while if you're finding Monarch frustrating. Most players, myself included, find each jump between levels--starting with Noble to Prince--to be very challenging. Your Prince game was indeed atypical, especially since you played as Rome! They have the most awesome--some would say overpowered--UU that is available reasonably early. Kicking AI butt as Rome is not nearly as challenging as playing as several other civs.

I have played around two dozen games at Prince level and still find each one challenging. I tend to win now more often than not, but I still get thrown for a loop every now and then. I'm honing my game skills to a very fine point before making the jump to the next level.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

Kicking AI butt as Rome is not nearly as challenging as playing as several other civs.

It can be if there are AI civs not reachable before Astronomy. I don't think the Praetorian is that overpowered, the real problem is that the AI doesn't use axemen effectively, favoring horse units instead. As long as you're aware enough to pump out a few spears to meet the charge, that's a lot of units the AI throws away to no effect - and it gets even worse for the AI when those spears get promoted to Formation.

I will admit, though, that when I start with Caesar as a neighbor, I do aim to take them out of the game before they can get Iron Working!

 

[macrobot]

Start with 'X' settings...
A lot of guides for the higher settings seem to be played on smaller map sizes with fewer civs. I like to play on huge maps with 18 civs and either Continents or Custom Continents. Should I expect to be able to win on these settings? Typicaly I will end up regenerating the map 10 times or more to try and find a decent starting location which is difficult. For me, 'decent' means I'll have two sources of extra food plus some other bonus resource of any kind. Even if I get such a site, the rest of the map is in pretty sad shape. Grassland is obviously a key terrain feature but I won't have any sites for my other cities where grassland will be 50% or more of the city's area. Is there a map setting that is more friendly for finding ideal city sites?

CHeck out the HOF. THey released a starting map selection tool that auto regenerates the map if it is not within specs you have defined. I find that Cow and Gold are the most useful early resources. IF I can find that plus any other food tile (flood plain or resource) I am in great shape.

I turned off Barbs to get my first win and I am going to go back to turning them on again now that I have that under my belt.

As for leader selection it sounds like you need to try using Washington. He is financial and Organized which shoudl allow you to keep your research high throughout the game.

Finally I think you may be overvaluing exploration. For arguments sake let's assume that your second city will be founded no more than 8 tiles from your initial city. You are going to want to explore 2-3 tiles past this so you can make your decision appropriately. THis means that you need to explore no more than 11 tiles in any direction. Igonring diagonals because 11 squares diagonally is not the same thing, you now have a 22X22 square you need to epxlore. Outside of this it doesn't much matter what is going on. WHen you are ready for the AI's they will come to you.

 

[nealhunt]

Start with 'X' settings...
Certain settings do make it easier. In my experience, the more AIs there are, the more difficult it is to influence them. The worst possible situation is a continent with 2-3 AIs that are friendly. With the Monarch research boost and tech trading they will quickly outdistance everyone else. 18 Civs on a huge map is always going to be very challenging as the probability of a cabal of AIs that you simply can't reach is pretty good.

Steal AI workers
This is a useful technique but very situation dependent.

Fight an early war
Go for a military tech right out of the gate. On a huge map on monarch level, you have very little spare time before the barbarian hordes start attacking. Getting a military tech up and running is paramount for survival, let alone an early war. As soon as you get it set up, pump out units and send fogbusters.

There are 3 early military paths - Bronze Working, Archery, or Animal Husbandry. BW and AH are both dependent on resources, obviously. Typically, I will go for BW and use archery as a fall back because you need no resources. On rare occasions I will completely skip all the "early" military techs and run for Construction, but it takes just the right combination of resources - elephants, precious metals or gems to power research, etc..

Worst case scenario with no resoruces is you get Archery, pump out archers and beeline for Construction. It's not exactly a truly early war, but a rush with archers and cats works very well and by the time it stops working you have usually researched a better military option and have a TON of multi-city raider cats.

Keep in mind that you don't need to take cities to win a war. The real purpose of going to war early is to increase your empire sooner, but an early war does not need to take cities to do that. You only need to stop your neighbors from taking the open territory. By pillaging and posting units in good defensive positions adjacent to a city you can effectively crush AI expansion.

Similarly, later in the game you likely won't be able to crush an AI who is significantly ahead. You can, however, pillage improvements across the entire empire. Their population will fall, their economy crashes, and you can then pull ahead.

Cottage spam
I think this is a useful tactic, but it's only a game-winner for Financial civs. Early cottages are definitely paramount to support your economy but spamming isn't really necessary.

Do 'X' slingshot
I truly don't understand how people say they consistently lose the CS slingshot race. Use the Prophet version. The AI can beat you to the Oracle, but they cannot stop you from getting a Great Prophet. Better yet, do both the Oracle and Prophet paths at the same time. If one fails, no problem. If both work, so much the better. Most of the other slingshots I've seen rely on great people popping techs, so there is really no reason they shouldn't work as well.

Overall, though, I rely far less on slingshots than beelining.

Use diplomacy
I have nothing for you on this. I typically end up in a situation where the large majority of the AIs dislike me strongly.

 

[cabert]

many good points here, so i won't develop much

but a few things need to be clear for you
- noble is easy (mistakes are not killing you), and monarch is really tough, prince can be challenging enough for all the tactics you mentionned.
At Prince level, those tactics are very powerful and "easy" to do.
Above, they are a necessity (not really, but it's hard to get by without) and you need to know them well enough to play "just right" meaning following the tactic without being a slave of the tactic.
- worker robbery is one of my favourite. At prince i earn myself 3/4 free workers in the first 1000 years. At monarch, i'm happy to steal one or 2, mostly as denial for my next victim.
At prince you can take the only worker the AI's got, then for the whole war time (10 turns, if no casualty) no improvement is made = one AI a whole era backwards = easy prey.
At monarch, the AIs usually have built a second city when you find them (not always, but happens quite often), so the worker you steal isn't going to throw them back to the caves. Yet you can a good preparatory effect for your early war. And it's through the early war that you can capture the workers you didn't build (a good move is catching an ennemy settler before he reaches his landing spot = 1 worker for you, but you need to kill the escort = you need units stronger than archers). Depending on the situation i do build (2nd build most of the time) 1 worker by myself, to connect the ressources i need ,and to chop what i need to build.

- early war is meant to be really early, to completely kill one or more opponents. You need BW for the rushing and chopping, but it's not necessarily for axemen. Chariots (even if not a UU) can do the trick. If you managed a barrack, you can have powerful enough early units with any one of 3 ressources : copper, iron, horses. If you've got no copper, it's because you didn't land a settler next to it fast enough! Ok, sometimes, it's really far away. AH isn't too expensive, and the wheel is necessary anyway. Chariots with flanking (first half) and combat (second half) are really good and cheap.
against the backwards civ you stole the workers earlier, it can be enough.
And you don't need a tech lead to win a war. You need good planning and lots of troops. sometimes, a simple action (pillaging the ivory, the iron or the copper, or even just fortifying troops on the forested hill in your own territory on the way to your cities) gives you a big temporary boost.

- cottage spam : it's meant to say you need cottages to pay the maintenance, not to say you need to overexpand when you have no possibility!

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Some folks point out that rapid growth will push out your borders so that Barbs can't appear, but I haven't found this to be the case.

On the larger maps, I have the same problem you describe. Still, I will chop down some trees and use some slaves to help get my 2nd city settler and worker done quickly. 4-6 cities can reduce barbarian attacks to a couple access points depending on the map.

Adding cities in good positions and placing them early will help with tech, but so would growing the original city. However, I go for the extra cities to scale my production rate from tiles and slaves and open up more choppable forest to help that early production... and then I build two or so cottages in each city to bolster research and maintenance (they upgrade from hamlet quick if you actually use them so place them well). I see good production value in rapidly tripling or quadrupling the size of my empire. Being Organized helps you grow beyond that, of course, but I have yet to play organized on Prince or above so I don't know how much more you can grow.

I like to stick with the simple: Destroy an opponent's improvements and access to copper/horses early in a war so any enemy reinforcements are weaker than yours and harder to make; consider destroying barbarian and foreign cities for the money if new city is not optimal enough or you have grown too far; nurture a few cottages to grow early when you can; have fun.

My $0.02,
SR

Latest game is Epic, Prince, Terra, Large, Random (Egypt), v1.61, 18 starting civs, currently 25 BC. (Couldn't win on Monarch so I dropped one level to learn more of the game.)

 

[Eqqman]

I truly don't understand how people say they consistently lose the CS slingshot race. Use the Prophet version. The AI can beat you to the Oracle, but they cannot stop you from getting a Great Prophet. Better yet, do both the Oracle and Prophet paths at the same time. If one fails, no problem. If both work, so much the better. Most of the other slingshots I've seen rely on great people popping techs, so there is really no reason they shouldn't work as well.

How do you guarantee yourself a Great Prophet? This requires founding a religion since you'd have to build a temple if you are losing the Wonder race. At Monarch I never manage to found a religion unless I'm lucky enough to have immediate access to a commerce source, such as playing a civ starting with Fishing and having a seafood start. In games when I don't found a religion, I usually don't have one happen to spread to one of my cities until the AD years, well after the point when I need to have researched CoL/CS.

 

[Sisiutil]

How do you guarantee yourself a Great Prophet? This requires founding a religion since you'd have to build a temple if you are losing the Wonder race. At Monarch I never manage to found a religion unless I'm lucky enough to have immediate access to a commerce source, such as playing a civ starting with Fishing and having a seafood start. In games when I don't found a religion, I usually don't have one happen to spread to one of my cities until the AD years, well after the point when I need to have researched CoL/CS.

You don't need to found a religion at all. Just build Stonehenge, which gives you 2 GP points towards a Great Prophet per turn. Build the Oracle in the same city for another 2 GP/GP points. DON'T build any other wonders in that city with different GP point preferences, such as the Pyramids.

 

[Eqqman]

You don't need to found a religion at all. Just build Stonehenge, which gives you 2 GP points towards a Great Prophet per turn. Build the Oracle in the same city for another 2 GP/GP points. DON'T build any other wonders in that city with different GP point preferences, such as the Pyramids.

Ah.. then it's no guarantee. One of the other community pundits recommended not relying on Wonders as part of your strat, so I've been following that advice. I don't bother with early Wonders if I'm not Industrious, and even then it can be a huge drain on early expansion to try and get one out, let alone two.

 

[Pantastic]

Ignore the stuff people say about playing on a small map with few civs; they're just effectively turning down the difficulty. You can probably win diety very quickly by rushing the other guy playing the incas on a tiny duel map, but if you don't enjoy that kind of game there's no point to it. From what I've seen people say, most of the people who beat the top 2 levels win less than half their games, maye less than a quarter, because they'll restart if they don't have some exact configuration (not something vague like '2 food and one other', but 'has to have stone, and I'll restart if there's no bronze nearby). There's nothing wrong with doing that, but if you enjoy more varied starting conditions to the game (especially playing with random civs or larger maps), you shouldn't worry that you won't be able to 'handle' the top levels. I win Monarch routinely and can win Emperor though not consistently, I'll probably never go up to immortal/diety because I'd have to play to artificially by my standards, do way more micromangement than I enjoy, and just drive in the AI. (It's a bit silly that an AI starting with 2 archers and a warrior won't guard his worker, and won't attack you even if you leave your capital undefended for 2000 years).

The trick to beating barbarians is to either get good units before you start your big expansion or seriously push back fog. I bet when you're defending with warriors, you have them inside your borders fortified on some resource you'd like to protect; that's a good way to get yourself flooded by barbarians. Take your warriors and spread everything but the 1 in the city for happiness out, you want make sure none of their 8 visible squares (or whatever it is on a hill) are in your cultural borders. If you see in 4 spaces outside of your border (natural one, then 3 for the warriors) then you cut down a LOT on the number of barbs. And if you do lose a warrior, you have a ton of time to deal with it instead of a nasty barb unit right on top of you.

Also, early on with the pyramids you shouldn't bother with universal suffrage; rushing is too expensive and you don't have any towns for the +1 hammer. Representation is the king if you do have pyramids, you get 2 happiness in your biggest cities can run a scientist or two in each decent-sized town for 6-12 beakers.