Strategy for Monarch Players

[amirsan]

I have just completed my second full game on Monarch and I'm starting to become pretty good on this level. This strat could work on any below level but I dont think it may work on Emperor of Diety.

Anyways, I started this game on Standard map, Pangea with six AI as the Germans (my new favorite civ). I started on my first city building a warrior to seek out my closest nieghbor then after that all I built was like 5 or 6 Archers before my second city. When I found my first nieghbor it was the Vikings so I gathered and quikley attacked and wiped them off. That is the best thing to do esspecially if your a militarialistic civ to get alot of garanteed land.

People say that you should try to beat the AI to a certain tech, that is not neccesarily true. What you have to do is research something that they may not be researching but is expensive. For example, when begining a game research to Construction or Currency because the AI dont perferaby start researching to those techs, they usually research to Code Of Laws and Literature of some sort. Let them research one thing while you research another, so when you both get a tech you can trade for thier techs. This will realy get you all to the Modern Age quite fast.

You may be thinking that if they get a tech to they'll be making money too, but realy if they dont have money how are they going to pay you for your tech???

This is also good because the AI usually dont have any money to be paying you gpt in the Early ages.

Attacking the strongest AI opponent is probably what everyone also thinks that should be done but I think it should be done differently. The strtongets AI opponent is the one thats supplying you with money to stay alive. To stay strong then attack a weak AI thats not supplying you with anything. When MA's and MI's come in is when you should start a war with a superpower.

The last time I started this strat the game came out pretty good. Please try this and tell me how it works out. Give me some feedback. Thats all I got to say.........for now.

 

[amirsan]

Heelllloooooooo... anyone there to respond??

 

[Bouchehog]

I entirely agree that an early military campagn is often the best way to secure a lot of land early on, however have you considered the remifications of delaying your second settler for so long? Furthermore, one tactic can be highly successful on one map and a complete failure on another. You really need to learn to tailor your approach to the resources you start with.

Your approach will sometimes pay off, but it becomes increasingly hard to pull off warrior or archer rush attacks on the AI as the difficulty increases (and opponents are gifted more units to start with). I suggest you only ever consider this when the enemy starts right on top of your start position and even then don't get into the habit of doing it or you'll find it hard to adjust as the difficulty increases.

As a general rule, your first thought during the first part of the game will be to expand as quickly as possible and this means settler production. The exact way you do this will depend entirely on the resources available to you in your capital. But consider this - if you build a settler first, you then have two towns to pump out the military. If you keep building settlers then your production capability will increase exponentially. You'll often find that you have more shield production than food and as a result you can build one warrior and a settler by the time you reach size three.

Thus I suggest that you try this: look at your starting terrain and work out how much food you have compared to shields. Try to maximise settler production until you have a good number of cities (the exact number will depend on the map). Once you have a good number of cities start to build some warriors and continue to build settlers. When you're ready for war, upgrade the warriors and off you go. This tactic will still be flawed on many maps, but I think it would be a step in the right direction for you. The key to the early game is expansion and micro-management. I suggest you have a read up on the many articles and threads about this. Happy gaming! Hope this helped!

 

[amirsan]

yes i agree on the micromanagement part

 

[TedJackson]

Whilst the archer rush is a viable strategy it won't work all the time. The obvious exception is you're alone on an island

It also will be harder to translate this strategy to the higher levels where the AI starts with more units and may have 2 or more cities before you make contact.

So long as you realise that you are trading peaceful expansion for military conquest then you should be OK.

Tech trading is definitely an important part of the game, especially again on the higher levels.

I realise that once you find a strategy that produces a win then it's very tempting to stick with it but one of the greatest features of Civ is it's ability to throw a curve ball at you. Dealing with the curve ball is probably the most important skill a Civ player can have.

regards

Ted