Prince vs. Monarch

[Kadazzle]

I've only had 3 attempts at Prince, and I have won them all. The first was a continents Cultural win, second was a continents Diplomatic win, and the third was a Pangaea Domination victory. After having success on Prince I was thinking about trying out Monarch, but I was wondering, what is the main difference between Prince and Monarch? I know about the science multipliers that the AI get, but is there anything other than that, that will make it harder for me to win on Monarch?

 

[Celebithil]

If you want to know the details, they can be found in CIV4HandicapInfo.xml in your Assets/XML/GameInfos in your Civ4 directory (BTS if you use BTS).
Most of the time you can guess what the different values represent.

The most major difference is that you pay more maintenance (on everything, from units to civic upkeep to distance maintenance and inflation). Also your research costs go up (while the AI cost goes down), barbarians are less nice to you (did you know you cannot lose your first fight against a barb (animal) on Prince?), and huts give less good goodies. Finally a significant change is that all AI start with archery (and archers), this makes Monarch ideal for Quecha-rushing, but other early rushes are generally harder.

 

[futurehermit]

I would definitely say that maintence is something you have to keep an eye on. And that only gets worse as you go up in difficulty. Diplo becomes more important too.

 

[assass1n]

The AI doesn't get multipliers we get handicapped the AI stays put at its Noble level Handicap

 

[Yesod]

Prince

+2 health
+4 happy
6 free units
–1 AI attitude
20% low gold
10% Warrior, technology, experience,
high gold, maps
5% Scout, healing
5% strong barbarians
15% weak barbarians
research ×1.10
unit cost ×0.60
distance maint. ×0.85
civic upkeep ×0.90
inflation ×0.95
AI costs ×0.95
90% animal attack probability
animal strength: –30%
barbarians in 30 turns•••
barb. city creation prob.: 60%
1 free win vs. barbarians
barbarian strength: –5%

Monarch

+2 health
+4 happy
4 free units
–1 AI attitude
AI starts with 1 Archer extra
20% low gold
10% Warrior, technology,
experience, maps
5% Scout, healing, high gold
10% strong barbarians
15% weak barbarians
research ×1.15
unit cost ×0.70
distance maint. ×0.90
civic upkeep ×0.95
inflation ×1.00
AI costs ×0.90
90% animal attack probability
animal strength: –20%
barbarians in 25 turns•••
barb. city creation prob.: 70%

From BTS reference guide (here somewhere on the forum)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The AI doesn't get multipliers we get handicapped the AI stays put at its Noble level Handicap

So you think.

The deity era bonus alone is 5%/era. You'd probably wince if you saw the exact cost reduction on a modern or future era deity unit. However, these bonuses exist at all levels above noble to some extent.

Between prince and monarch is the first time you can't warrior rush with every civ in the game. Below monarch, the AI just dies to warrior rushing instantly since it doesn't have archers and can't protect itself from 5 early warriors.

Monarch AI still techs pretty slow, enough that you have to self-research a lot of things or be stuck waiting for a while until trading. Mostly just start paying minimal attention to commerce/tech order and diplo and it should be doable, especially if you're already blowing prince out.

 

[fugazi]

The AI does build a substantial amount of troops more than on prince I'd say, so do not neglect your military as much! Though sometimes prince AI's also stack up pretty bad

 

[Shurdus]

At monarch diplomacy starts to become important, but the AI still techs slow enough for you to keep up. trading is doable and usefull on monarch but not required as it is on emperor+.

 

[Zeiter]

I think I'm ready to move up to monarch, but I have a quick question:

I love playing with the "start as minor civs" option toggled on (Wolfshanze mod). This means, you are always at war with the other civs in the beginning until you and they discover writing. It leads to some really fun, scrappy openings.

I am worried, though, that having the AI start with archery will cause some serious problems with this. If they just started with one archer, that wouldn't be too bad, as long as they kept it in their capital for early defense. But if they send out their archer as a scout (and/or other archers soon thereafter), and it shows up next to my capital on like turn 20...that could be bad. There would be nothing I could do to counter it, except pray that my warrior didn't die.

 

[Bostock]

Judging from my memories of very early choke attempts, how the Monarch AI's use their hyper-early archers in a war really depends on the AI, and even a little bit on luck. You *can* get unlucky and see one of their archers head for your cities, so you should have a warrior on terrain somewhere; even that may not be enough -- I can't say for sure they won't bypass it. Maybe you'll want a hill city or river/hill city between them and the capital.

Again, you can also get lucky and see them wander around outside your territory, never entering it. :-O

 

[assass1n]

That Barb Strength value is wrong because I get a 5p.c. bonus while attacking barbs on Monarch and it has to be higher on Prince
I used to think that only we get Handicapped but it looks like its both way

 

[Hereditary Rule]

Just from my own experience, I moved to prince, played about 7 games and won them all. Figured it was time for Monarch. I'm on my 4th monarch game, lost 1 when Monty pulled an awesome axe rush on me and killed me (I was PRO too. so much for that ).

I didn't find the difficulties that much different other than the fact it's harder to rush AI's due to starting with archery.

 

[azzaman333]

Monarch is probably the hardest level where you can experiment with your strategy and maintain a winning chance.

 

[Zeiter]

Thanks for the advice! In any case, it turns out I don't think I'll be moving up to monarch quite yet. My last prince game seemed like it was a breeze, but I think I got somewhat of a lucky start, boxing in the Egyptians and eventually taking their capital in the classical period.

During this current game of mine as Churchill, on the other hand, Ramses is getting his revenge. Things seemed to be moving along just fine like the last game, until I noticed that Judaism was starting to engulf the entire globe thanks to Ramses' missionary spamming. I've tried to get some of my Confucian missionaries out there, but I fear that I may be too late. And Ramses is almost sure to complete the AP before I get a shot at it. I'm almost sure I'm going to be facing a 7 vs. 2 infidel war on my hands any day now...my only plan is to compile a SoD and march waaaay across to the other side of the continent to raze that AP to the ground. Needless to say, this game looks like it might be a close shave. I think I'll stick with prince for a bit...and maybe also try to work myself off of my CHA crutch.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Shameless plug: just join the last Monarch game. We are playing Genghis there, with a great starting location. Should be an easy game to try the jump.

 

[Bostock]

You are afraid a holy war will be declared against you as an infidel? As long as you have at least one Jewish or part-Jewish city, that cannot happen... if autospread is not enough, you could as a last resort declare against the least well liked civ that has some Jewish cities, and take one of them...

 

[Zeiter]

Ah, good idea. No, I don't have any Jewish cities yet, but I do know some neighbors I could pick on to remedy that....

That brings up a second potential problem, though: if I snag a Jewish city to prevent the holy war, and that makes it so that everyone has at least one Jewish city, then Ramses will get a good shot at an AP victory....hmmm...this game is still going to be tricky....

 

[btgwynn]

To OP:

Play a huge map on normal speed on prince. Go for a Domination or Conquest win. If you succeed, you're ready for Monarch.

 

[Zeiter]

To OP:

Play a huge map on normal speed on prince. Go for a Domination or Conquest win. If you succeed, you're ready for Monarch.

Erm...no, that just doesn't sound like fun.

Really, as a default, game speed should scale with map size. Quick games on small maps, normal games on standard maps, epic games on large maps, and marathon games on huge maps.

A marathon game on a small map is like playing 2 difficulty notches easier. A trivial conquest. A quick game on a huge map is like playing 2 difficulty notches harder. Impossible to conquer in time.

I usually play marathon games on large maps, so I'm fudging a little bit (I should be playing on huge maps, really...but my computer starts getting bogged down by the renaissance period with so much stuff to keep track of). But maybe I will try a marathon prince game on a huge map with a non-CHA leader, and if that goes well, I'll jump up to monarch. I'll just have to be patient with my computer and make sure there are no unnecessary programs running in the background.

 

[btgwynn]

Zeiter,

I agree with what you said, which pretty much sums up my point; try difficult map settings on the level you're comfortable with, and if you do well you know you can handle more conventional settings at a higher level.