[BTS] Shadow Game: Monarch w/ Charlemagne

Regarding practising / stepping up - It depends on a few things.

Time - If you have a reasonable amount of time, I would play a few more at Monarch, possibly Emperor, whilst you get to put into practice what you've learnt from this game. Importantly this game was a relatively quick-fire game, with the ability to quickly roll through the opposition. At Monarch to some extent you can normally find someone to attack early doors. I'd try a game where you also focus on a degree of teching - Certainly on Monarch, you should soon get a reasonable tech lead, what you do with it is optional (I.E Currs or mass rifle / cannon. Or tech through to tanks - so you learn the later game.

With limited time, then feel free to go in at the deeper end, but I'd be slightly wary of going a) straight to immortal (I agree with Fippy that Immortal from Emperor isn't a huge jump, generally AI has more developed cities (starts with worker + extra tech (or 2 from Monarch))) - Until you are sure of the basics. b) If you were thinking of another shadow game, that's OK, but be careful of seeing the answer, through better players, rather than getting there yourself. I'd probably suggest trying 4-5 starts on the higher level, and to a degree feedback where you are getting to after say 75-100 turns. I.E Are you winning (If so, great) - How's military going? Tech etc. If you're struggling, why might that be? (I think you might initially find city expansion feels too slow, especially on Immortal.)

To use an analogy, in my spare time, I do a little chess coaching. If I helped a student by walking through a game with them against an opponent, that's good if they learn, but if I helped them through a much stronger playing than them, whilst it would no doubt be a win, it's only any good if the student has learnt why the game was won. In reality trying without the support, they would likely fall short. OK Civ 4 isn't chess, the variabilities in Civ 4 are less vast ultimately, but I think the premise is sound.

Really what you want is help out of the forum, which allows you to win games at higher levels yourself, as indeed I have done, but perhaps I've been more cautious in ensuring that I know what I'm doing before moving up..

That said, the summary you made above, if you were to stick to many of those principles should work on most / all levels up until Immortal. (I think Deity would need a slight tweaking.)
 
Great game!

On progressing through the difficulty levels, you should do what you want because it’s supposed to be fun. My personal take is that I regret taking so long to move up. I don’t have any real sense of the difference between (say) monarch and immortal because for me the real distinction is between playing understanding some of the key concepts and playing without understanding them.

I found civ on the intermediate levels very hard until I found the forums. Once you know relatively few things like: food in first ring, fog busting, whip, chop, most buildings bad, most wonders bad, great people in golden age, you’re either preparing for/ fighting a war or you’re not, who plots at pleased and begging, the game on the same difficulty level becomes completely unrecognisable even if you only apply the above in a relatively ragged way.

Honestly I don’t really remember noticing much difference between any of the difficulties until I started playing demigod a bit on the NC games and then deity. I should have taken the plunge sooner rather than cantering through games on X difficulty wondering if it could cope on Y difficulty.
 
@Peteyboy absolutely, agree with everything you said - understanding a suggested decision is not the same as coming to the same conclusion yourself, and that's the biggest reason I'll need to practice alone. I like your suggestion of bringing mostly self-played games to the forum for feedback.

Also, cheers for chess! I only got back into it 5 years ago, and I'm not great; ~1800 on lichess rapid. But, it's a mild obsession for me. Great that you do some spare-time coaching.

@Mr_Trotsky thanks for all the help, and for sharing your experiences moving up the levels - and reminding us to have fun!
 
Is there a way I can play this map? I have the latest BUFFY but when try loading it I get a loading error and the game immediately crashes before I even have a chance to read the error.
 
Is there a way I can play this map? I have the latest BUFFY but when try loading it I get a loading error and the game immediately crashes before I even have a chance to read the error.
@CGQ - sorry for the late reply, your post didn't get on my radar. Not sure it's possible, I started this game on the main Steam branch i.e. not the beta, and I also selected 'Lock Modified Assets'. Don't know enough to say if those issues make it impossible or not.
 
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