Need help with Monarch win

[Sisiutil]

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.

NOTHING is guaranteed, padawan, neither in life nor in Civ.

However.

Stonehenge is a very early and relatively cheap wonder, and the AI does not seem to prioritize it. On Prince, if I choose to build it, I pretty much always can. The Oracle is more competitive, but again, I can usually manage it on Prince, if I focus on it.

Your mileage on Monarch, of course, may vary.

While you don't want to rely on Wonders, it is worthwhile pursuing certain goals in the game in order to build them (or steal them through conquering). Wonders give you a competitive advantage, plain and simple. As you go up through the levels, the AI gets more and more advantages against the human player. It makes sense to try to get some advantages back, and Wonders are one way to do that.

 

[MrFelony]

try going for hinduism isntead of budhism. the ai's seem to rarely go for hiduism. right now im trying to get a hold on monarch. one of my earliest games i won in 1830 by electing myself head of the U.N a couple of rounds before i would win from conquest. that method consisted of several styles that i've been trying to repeat. of course a goldmine and cow to start with iron popping up in my 2nd expansion helped . 5 level 2-3 swordsman are pretty effective at destroying your oponents

 

[cabert]

you can get religions at monarch.
I played Isabella and got bouddhism (thank you, flood plains and gold mine), and hatcheptsuh on the other end of the map got hindouism pretty close to my buddhism foundation, so i guess she went for it straight away.

It was a somewhat tough game, but managed a cultural win (late part was rather easy, having a tech lead at the start of the 100% culture, and a good lot of shrines, plus very good production cities besides my top 3, although i just could not get GA, damn those shrines )

Edit : in the same game, i got myself the Oracle (must be the second time only that i built it), since my second city hooked the marble and i popped masonry from a hut.
I usually don't go for the oracle, but when luck is showing, you have to take the opportunity

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Masonry and pottery are my favorite techs-from-a-hut.

To get Great Prophets:

You don't have to found the religion necessarily. You can conquer a founding city if that's the way you are going about getting a prophet. With stone, Stonehenge is a quick build in a production city. With marble, the Oracle is a safe bet. Any which way you get Prophet points will make it much more likely that you get a Great Prophet as your first and second Great Person. The way I normally play, it's actually tough for me to make my first couple Great People someone other than a Prophet.

I don't rely on wonders to make any strategy work, but I do go for them if the resources are in my favor and having the wonder would help me reach my goals. I'm an advocate of having the flexibility necessary to take advantage of what you are given in life or in a game.

 

[Bigfoot]

Greetings all. I currently play on Monarch level. I generally play with a random civ, and choose continents with either a standard or a small world. So far my experience has been 'win some, lose some', which is probably about right since it allows for a gaming experience that is challenging yet not too frustrating. With more skill I hope to move up to Emperor, although I doubt that I will move beyond that level, at least not without some cheesy tactics and / or settings. I found it pretty easy to win with either Rome or the Incas at Deity playing on a duel world, but what's the point? You miss out on about 90% of what the game has to offer playing that way.

You may want to try a succession game if you have the time, I find them to be a very effective learning tool. Each game is different and will reward (or punish) your starting approach accordingly. It took me a while to get over the Civ III mentality of 'expand early at all costs' and focus instead on just 2-3 early cities. But food is still of paramount importance, especially when using the slavery / whip / axeman rush strategies. If you have horses I find chariots very good for barb suppression, especially if you have 1-2 of them upgraded to sentry. Of course you will need a road net too.

A couple of things that I don't do anymore are 1) chop everything in sight to get early settlers and 2) build cottages everywhere. Forests are just so valuable for health, and I really like getting all those lumber mills once Repalcement Parts comes in. Obviously I do build cottages, but I try to center them in cities dedicated to commerce.

My ealry research choices depend on what type of game I think it is going to be. Often my first tech is whatever I think will be most useful to my first worker. Religions can be a good choice if you start next to a dangerous neighbor; simply spread the faith, and good relations (and a steady stream of commerce) ensue. Seeing where everything is in their cities helps a great deal in determiing when and how you are going to plant the knife in their back Also (at the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious) city specialization and good GP management are very important -- two areas I feel I have to improve on still.

 

[Eqqman]

Okay, I'm curious to see if anybody thinks this game is salvagable.

I started out trying to maximize efficient use of slavery once again. I didn't build any new cities that weren't going to be next to a tile I couldn't immediately put a food improvement on. I stopped trying to build Obelisks for culture. I whipped at every +11 unhappiness turns or sooner if it was a dire emergency. I only used overflow to make Workers and Settlers.

As usual I have too few cities and not enough Workers to develop the cities I do have. Science is so poor that Currency and Construction are out of reach. I did manage to get the Pyramids, but since I am not able to support specialists the Pyramids are giving me little value. It is taking forever for the GE to pop out, and when he does, there will be no Wonder for him to work on anyway. Instinct tells me to rush the Library in Berlin so I can work specialists to save my science, but this is going to violate the slavery coda.

I started off with a war against Saladin to the west, and managed to get one Worker from him that survived the trip back to Germany. But I did not raze a single one of his cities and my Axemen were no match for his Archers. Typically he would attack one of my guys that was trying to pillage with 2 Archers, so I'd be softened up from the first and finished off with the second. I was not able to get the unit loss ratio in my favor for a long time. By the time I finally made peace with him, Alexander declared war from the north a few turns later. So I'm still at war, and the constant demands for building troops vs Arabia and Greece have totally stunted my development (not to mention having to replace losses to Barbarians). I kept trying to persuade Alexander at the beginning to join in my war with Saladin but he wasn't interested. I'm still uncertain as to how to get somebody to start liking you in the early years when you have nothing to offer them and a friend comes in most handy.

I'm at a loss as to how you are supposed to win a war in the Ancient era. The best I could do with CR Axemen is get 60%ish odds against his fortified archers (in cities with no(!) cultural defense bonus). This means I need at least 2:1 in units and I don't know how to get that. If he has two Archers in a city, then by the time my 4th Axeman can arrive, he'll now have three requiring me to get two more Axemen and delaying my attack. If I want to be serious about getting a large enough stack to be sure I can wipe out a city when I reach it, I have to pool together every troop from my whole empire (using that term loosely) leaving it poorly defended. And if I win the battle, I lose time building reinforcements and healing up my men to attack the next city. And when I can count the number of cities I have on one hand, this is a huge drain. I don't see how you can win a war without having an early era UU.

So this is a point I'll typically reach before giving up. I'm behind the AIs in science and have no way to catch up. I'm sure I can survive the war with Alexander, but I'm willing to bet I'll just be at war with Saladin again as soon as that is over, if not before. The future is just going to be me hanging on with no hope of victory. If I do get into the later years, I'll just be stuck trying to fight a war with units that become obsolete in the time it takes them to reach their opponents. It really p***** me off that I can't make any headway at all at this level. I'm not an unintelligent fellow and earlier levels were easy enough that I got bored quickly. Can anyone figure out how I screwed myself with this game?

 

[malekithe]

Quick observations, not meant to be thorough:

In Berlin:

• Working all 4 (!) clams at the same time is a bit of overkill when your happiness cap is 7 (6 when whipping).
• You're obviously whipping more than just every ten turns.
• It looks like you're not whipping more than one citizen at a time. Berlin, with all that food, should be whipping 3 every time it can.
• Build some cottages!!! That's why your science is so poor.
• If you're going to be making troops, get a barracks first. This is a perfect building to whip multiple citizens when building.
• If you're going to work 4 coastal tiles, build a lighthouse.

Hamburg:

• Should have been a pure production city set up to crank out troops.
• Maybe should have settled one to the east, but that's debatable.

Military:

• Why the spearmen? Just curious.
• Why 3 axemen off in a desert in the middle of nowhere?
• Your military is sizable now, but too spread out. A focused military is much more powerful.
• Instead of threatening both Greek cities on your border, you should send all of the axemen in early wars at the same city. You'd have one of his by now if you'd done this.

I didn't look at much else. It's somewhat hard to believe that you're still fighting an axeman war in ~150AD. You have to figure out a way to advance up the tech tree. If you are so hasty to blame whipping all your citizens for all your troubles, try not to instead. Don't even bother switch to slavery. Give that a try and see if you don't do better. But, Build More Cottages!

Also, a 60% chance is great for an axeman attacking an archer. I usually go in with more like 25-40% odds. Look at it this way, if you're bringing 4 axes to kill 2 archers, you will probably both lose two units and you gain a city.

I'd seriously recommend going back and mastering Prince before playing on Monarch. It's not an easy difficulty where you can win through bad habits. You can win despite those bad habits if you can make up for it in other areas of your game, but you can't rely on those bad habits to win the game for you. It is very possible to achieve higher scores on lower difficulties. As you learn the intricacies of the game, you'll learn how to speed your play and win games in the rennaissance age, not the modern age. Most games I play never get past riflemen and cannons.

 

[Eqqman]

In Berlin:

* Working all 4 (!) clams at the same time is a bit of overkill when your happiness cap is 7 (6 when whipping).
* You're obviously whipping more than just every ten turns.
* It looks like you're not whipping more than one citizen at a time. Berlin, with all that food, should be whipping 3 every time it can.
* Build some cottages!!! That's why your science is so poor.
* If you're going to be making troops, get a barracks first. This is a perfect building to whip multiple citizens when building.
* If you're going to work 4 coastal tiles, build a lighthouse.

The idea of the clams is that I can get a lot of food and commerce at the same time. If I had not worked all the clams I would have been much farther behind in tech. I really wasn't going nuts with the whip, unless a Barbarian was about to attack my city when it only had a Warrior in it. I'd get to the happiness limit on the clams and then switch to hammer tiles. If I don't do something to immediately start generating commerce then I fall farther behind... waiting for cottages to grow is a mid game help, not an early game one. Of course, this means that I have to start with Fishing before BW, or right after, which may be a setback all its own.

I would have liked to whip more at a time in Berlin, but my troop demands were high. If I whip the Barracks, Lighthouse, & Library then that's 30 turns when Berlin produces very few troops. I'm also not sure what the value of the Lighthouse is at this early stage of the game (except to be able to whip more people at a time). Is 24 food all that much better than 20 food (more is clearly better.. but is it THAT much better)?

I was building cottages, but none happened to be near Berlin. I did see that as a problem but I had a Worker shortage that kept me from getting back there to work on it.

Hamburg:

* Should have been a pure production city set up to crank out troops.
* Maybe should have settled one to the east, but that's debatable.

What does 'pure production' mean? Does that mean it's okay to work hammers? This is one of those things that I still don't get no matter how many times it gets explained to me. It still seems to me that if I can work hammers and get an Axeman out in 5 turns this is much better than using the whip and getting 1 every 10 turns with another coming soon with the overflow. Especially if I decide to churn out Warriors instead, it's no stretch to get a city making a Warrior every two turns. I'd think it would be better to do this and get a stack going much sooner than to spend time on slavery with such a city.

Military:

* Why the spearmen? Just curious.
* Why 3 axemen off in a desert in the middle of nowhere?
* Your military is sizable now, but too spread out. A focused military is much more powerful.
* Instead of threatening both Greek cities on your border, you should send all of the axemen in early wars at the same city. You'd have one of his by now if you'd done this.

Saladin had a Horse pasture that I discovered in my first war. It was amusing since I didn't have AH at the time I found it, but when I see a pasture on an empty tile I figure something is going on. So I had some Spearmen ready to face the Chariots, although as it turns out Saladin never rebuilt the pasture after the first time I pillaged it and I never saw a single mounted unit. Better safe than sorry though.

The Axemen are either guarding routes where Barbarians kept popping up or are coming back from war with Saladin. I was hoping that they would get enough XP to be useful vs an AI city, but that process turned out to be very slow.

I would have loved to have everybody in a game killing stack, but they were spread out because of various jobs they needed to do... usually Barbarian defense. This is one of my problems with early warfare. Given the limited amount of troops I can get together, there is almost no way for me to have a city crushing stack and have enough men left over to cover Barbarian actions.

The two Greek cities are a good example. They had just been founded right before Alexander declared war on me so they were still at size 1 when I took them out. Given the amount of defenders he had in each city, it was faster to send half my men toward each instead of sending everybody to the first one and then walking over to the second. Of course, now I lose that time anyway pulling them back together. Since the cities are in poor locations (for somebody not able to use an Iron Working Worker army) I went with early razings instead of waiting for them to build up pop for a capture. Besides which, while I'm waiting for the population to grow, Alexander is just building up the defenses and using them as a base to attack me. I thought I'd be better off trying to go for one of his more established cities later... but since Catapults are out of reach I gave up instead. I also had 50% losses in my attack on the western Greek city, which seems unacceptable to me in a game where my opponent can churn out troops twice as fast as I can. Even if we were making troops at the same rate it still seems high to me.

I've no doubt I can win on lower levels (because I've done it). Once I can win consistently, there is zero enjoyment in trying to see if I can shave off my 1950 win to a 1850 win or a 1750 win. Plus, the tactics you use to get those earlier wins are often of no help on higher difficulty levels. I want to learn how to win with ideas that work on nearly any level. I also want to be sure I'm learning things that will work equally well in multiplayer games.

BTW: I do win consistently on Monarch with OCC, although this involves forming a PA and helping them win. I haven't tried the diplo win yet.

 

[malekithe]

Once I can win consistently, there is zero enjoyment in trying to see if I can shave off my 1950 win to a 1850 win or a 1750 win. Plus, the tactics you use to get those earlier wins are often of no help on higher difficulty levels.

I disagree. The tactics and, more importantly, the stategy employed in shaving 100-200 turns off of a noble victory are crucial to playing well at higher difficulties. Learning how to fight efficient wars, build only the neccessary buildings, and optimize your terrain are exactly the skills you need to develop. You can't expect to move from 1950 noble victories to quality play on monarch. You must first learn how to efficiently build an empire. Slow victories on low difficulties allow for lots of excess. You need to "trim the fat" so to speak.

 

[pigswill]

I'm basically at prince just starting to flirt with monarch. I noticed from your save that you're playing normal speed; my observation is that most people playing the more difficult levels tend to play epic or marathon which effectively speeds up unit movement vs everything else.
In this game you've got plenty of units but no real focus; might be better to have 1 giant stack+ defenders/fogbusters and go after one city at a time. If you've got pyramids and running representation then get berlin a library and two scientists asap (12 research,15 with library and gs points for academy).
I don't (really) like to be uncharitable but Dan Quayle scores on noble is not ideal preparation for monarch. Shaving 200 years off noble victories gets you from Dan Quayle to Augustus Ceaser and helps you learn and incorporate stuff from the forum into your own games.

 

[Eqqman]

Here's an anecdote in response to the above two posts.

There's an old Sega Genesis game called 'Dr. Robotnik and the Mean Bean Machine'. For those unfamiliar with this title, it's one of those Tetris offshoots where you need to match up adjacent colored objects to make them go away. When you play multiplayer, scoring high causes the game to make life difficult for your opponent.

I sat down to play this game one night with a friend. We played for hours and hours and since this was the first time I'd ever played the game, I sucked. My friend started to get pissed at how easy he was beating me. If memory serves me correctly the game showed I had over a 30 game loss deficit. My friend started to set his window to a higher level of difficulty. But I would not let him give me an easy win. Every time he tried to set himself to a higher level of difficulty, I set myself to the same level even though it usually meant I just lost faster. But as the night wore on, I started to get the hang of it. I began to beat him consistently and eventually caught up to him in number of wins. Of course, he was no slouch and I was so far down in the hole initially that I was not able to pull significantly ahead of him. But I ended the evening completely satsified.

So take that however you wish as a testament to my character- 'plucky' or 'pigheaded', however you want to spin it. I'd rather lose 100 times on Monarch (and I'm getting there) than win 100 times on Noble and then maybe have 1 win on Monarch. And it's not like I'm trying to play Deity here.

Learning how to fight efficient wars, build only the neccessary buildings, and optimize your terrain are exactly the skills you need to develop.

I agree, but doing this should be possible regardless of the difficulty level. If I look at a given site and say 'wow, this looks great for X', then I could just as easily have done that at a higher setting than a lower one. Also, these things you mentioned are a little amorphous and not easily quantized. If I do them wrong on Noble, I'm not likely to be able to tell since I won anyway. However, at a higher setting it is far more obvious that I made a serious mistake. It's easier to fix something when I'm sure I did it wrong than when I might have done it wrong and I have to guess. One thing is certain, I doubt I'm in the 'excess building' area since aside from Granaries and a few Barracks I seldom get any structures built, since I'm always short on troops. I can either annoy an AI and try to steal his Workers, or fight off the Barbarians but not both, unless the map is such that the Barbarians are less of an issue.

It would be nice if there was an observer mode or something where I could watch an expert and ask questions instead of having to interpret theory. But you have to work with what you got.

 

[malekithe]

It would be nice if there was an observer mode or something where I could watch an expert and ask questions instead of having to interpret theory. But you have to work with what you got.

Participate in the next Game of the Month. It will likely be on Monarch difficulty. You can pick the brains of some of the best players out there and see exactly how they tackle the same problems you're faced with.

 

[pigswill]

Check out homeyg's attempt at emperor to observe experts at play and ask questions.
Maybe try prince (random settings/leaders). A lot of people appear to find the jump in difficulty significant. You say you're plucky/pigheaded so don't give up a game until you're beaten (rather than bail out at 500ad coz you're trailing badly).

 

[Eqqman]

Well, it's one thing to keep losing at a game that is finished in 15 minutes. It's a different story when I've invested several hours...

It's a tough call to acknowledge the loss or to spend even more hours in a game until somebody marches into my capital. Usually I'd rather lose twice in four hours or so than lose once in that time. Although, I'm sure I can still learn something even when I won't win.

 

[futurehermit]

No copper, iron, or horses? Dude. You're sunk. Restart.

This seems true, but the gritty side of me is coming out here...

There are a couple of things you can do: 1) Befriend someone who has a military resource. They'll usually trade you one if you give them 2 things in return (e.g., copper for corn and sheep). 2) Archer spam and take over a nearby city that has a military resource. 3) Got elephants? (The situation where you ALSO lack elephants in addition to the other 3 is extraordinarily rare) Research construction and elephant + cata mass. 4) Re-evaluate your game. Are you scouting well enough? Are you researching military techs early enough so you know where they are? Are you chop/pop rushing effectively enough to expand fast enough?

I generally research bronze asap. Then archery. Then stuff for pottery. Then animal husbandry. Then iron. Then construction. Then currency and CoL. I play on emperor so you really need archers cuz the barbs are pretty insane plus you won't live if you don't have copper super nearby. You also won't live if you don't get cottages down asap.

As you can see from this gameplan Catherine is extraordinary. Mining allows you bronze as first tech (chopping, copper, etc.). Hunting allows you a 2-scout start for more goody huts (techs and also gold to keep science up) plus easy access to archery. Cultural allows you to bypass the mysticism track. Financial helps you in the cottage department. Plus you have the uberpowered cossacks for your mid-to-late-game push.

 

[cabert]

eggman, i don't want to sound picking or worse.
I can see the point in playing at a difficulty you don't master in other games.

But this one is really special.
If you do any kind of mistake, it is multiplied by 500 if it's early, and you may see the effect only 50 turns later.
Mistakes are useful in the learning process only if you see them as mistakes.
And to really learn, you must try something else and see the differences.

If you really want to learn the hard way (meaning starting at monarch), you must be ready for some thorough testing phase, using save/reload possibilities at some key points.

First key point is the start.
What do i get if i start on the spot vs on the plain hills?
Play 10/20/30 turns and compare.

What do i get if i start reasearching meditation vs BW vs archery?
Play 30 turns and compare.

What do i get if i start building "a worker" vs "a warrior" vs "a barracks up to the point pop comes to 2, then worker" vs "settler"?
Play 30 turns and compare.

You can do this pure (meaning just you and the game), or do this in the same time you try to see the effect of some strat. articles.

I did the learning stuff at prince level (hard enough if you ask me), playing over and over the GoTM2, first just me, then trying to follow Hendrickkzoon's spoilers.
It still is my best score (meaning i need to learn further) but my skills skyrocketed from this : i now understand the meaning of worker robbery, of pillaging war, of grand scale war, of slavery