The move from Regent to Monarch

[saintly_saint]

Hi,

I'm now very accustomed to regent class games but am still to successfully beat monarch. I read the War Academy texts but it just doesn't help enough so I was wondering if anyonecould give some advice based on personal experience as to how to adapt to Monarch games.,

Thx

 

[IbnSina]

Monarch is just like Regent, only more so. You have to expand quickly, and aggressive play is rewarded. You've read the tutorials, so I won't bore you with details. I think that if there is any real difference in strategy it is this: the AI productivity bonuses make it more important, but more difficult, to have a large empire. Thus, having a profitable early war becomes important. Expand like there's no tomorrow in the beginning, but when space becomes short, start building a pile of horsemen or swords, and pick a target (preferably one that possesses an important resource or luxury that you need). Use gpt deals to keep some AIs from attacking you, and alliances to keep the others away. Then make a victim of your target. With your new larger empire, you can build markets and courthouses, and prosper.

 

[satchel]

Can you be a bit more specific - what kinds of problems are you having?

The main aspects of basic gameplay that I have learned from this board, and that have made me a solid Monarch player, are the following, in no particular order of importance. Note that these are all very general and each "rule" obviously has its exceptions that you will learn to spot by playing lots of games and reading succession games.

(1) It's almost impossible to have too many workers. You should have approximately one per city (at least) and always be improving your infrastructure. All your cities should be on your resource network and you should never be working an unimproved tile. That means roads on every worked tile along with the appropriate tile improvement.

(2) Use the luxury slider rather than entertainers to manage happiness in your cities. Making this most efficient means keeping most of your cities (especially your core cities) roughly the same size during the expansion phase. If you have a fast growing city use it to pump out settlers or (if it is food-rich but shield-poor) the ever-important workers. Also make it a priority to hook up your luxuries and check your F1 screen right away when you do so to see if you can turn the luxury slider down.

(3) Don't even try to build ancient wonders. Ancient wonders sound nice but if the choice is between an ancient wonder and a stack of swordsman you will probably do better with the latter. Your ancient core cities lose a lot of production during that time spent building wonders, and pretty much no wonder has an effect powerful enough to make up for all that lost time.

(4) Watch the science slider carefully. Make sure that you are always collecting the maximum gold you can given the pace at which you wish to research. Very early in the game, setting science to max may still not get you any tech faster than the maximum 50 turns, while costing you several gold a turn. In the early game, you should check your science slider very often (every turn if you can stand it) to optimize your income against whatever research pace you have chosen. One tactic I have adopted to very good result is to research my first tech at minimum science to build up a good hoard of gold, before turning up the research. The usefulness of this is apparent in the next point ...

(5) Trade, trade, trade. I like to go for a second-tier tech at minimum science first; then by the time I have met a bunch of AI's I have a valuable second-tier tech and a ton of gold to trade with. The early game is a great time to broker techs around because each civ starts with a different combination of techs depending upon their traits. You can get very good deals by brokering in this way. Check for new opportunities often.

I hate checking for trade opportunities every turn but it makes me so much more successful in my game that it is worth doing. I have taken to using a utility to make monitoring trade opportunities easier and more fun. I lately have been using CrpMapStat but CivAssist is also excellent.

 

[saintly_saint]

Wow, thanks for the detailed advice! To be a bit mor specific my problem might be an amalgam of little things which cuase me to lose enormous amounts of gold (especially for unit support) when I go over to Republic. This forces me to set my science down even more and I fall much too far back where science is concerned sometimes actually ending up almost a whole age behind the AI. With that in mind I can't even launch a proper attack seeing as how my swordsmen would be fighting musketmen and that kills me. However, your suggestions are very sound indeed and I will try to implement them more especially for trade. Oh yeah and about trade: I notice that even when I go for the science 0 gambit I still for short to buy a decent amount of techs from the AI.
Thx again for your response.

 

[klopolov]

Here's what seems to work fine for me:
I was at first slightly intimidated by probably moving up too quick. However, I find that playing agressivly when need be, pays off a lot in territory and technology. At first I was falling far behind in tech research, I have, however discovered, that a quick, well prepared and most importantly successful war will bring you land and technologies when AI sues for peace. Once I caught up and had more land, I was slowly, but surely pulling away from the AI (haven't finished the game yet, but looks good so far).
Another thing to consider: try to make the AI run their treasury dry. Sell them tech if need be, just not too much of them and make sure they pay as much as they are willing too. There is a downside to that, however, in my game the Romans could not afford to pay me anymore, so they went to war. Silly them are getting wiped off the face of the world, but if the AI is stronger, there might be problems.
Most importantly: lots of workers, micromanagment, artillery and many great tips from this site!

 

[gunnerxtr]

well i have no clue how to micromanage so i avoid that, so i imagine i would do better on monarch with it, even so i can win on monarch and my success comes from making sure you dont fall behind in tech early. pay high prices for techs early and broker them around, if you dont pay the high price for techs early you will never get ahead of the AI.

also you mentioned losing a lot of money on the govt switch. one way i combat this is by roading and irrigating to get my cities up to high populations and getting more commerce on the tiles. hope this helps.

 

[gunkulator]

I'll also add: Use CxxC city placement instead of CxxxC that you can get away with on Regent. Sure there will be overlap later on but by then the game will already have been decided. You can pack about 1/3 more cities into the same area meaning more commerce, production and smaller distance corruption. OCN corruption will be higher at the ourskirts so build the FP asap.

I'd like to reemphasize trading. You simply must do this at Monarch and above. This also means you need to get contacts asap. Build curraghs and warriors and go out and meet those other civs. More contacts means more civs to trade with.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

you must not count tiles between cities. You should build your cities so that they all have 12 tiles to work.

 

[gunkulator]

CxxC spacing generally gives about 12 tiles per city and it is easier to do than try to count up all those tiles.

Two other advantages of CxxC spacing over anything wider:
1) You can reinforce any city from its neighbors in a single turn.
2) You leave no culture gaps. A city completely surrounded by CxxC spaced cities has access to all 20 tiles which allows you to micromanage a few of your cities for settler pumps, wonder building and the like.

 

[The Fjonis]

I just started my first game on Monarch myself. Playing Small map with 3 competitors on archipelago (small island setting). Now that the map has been filled with cities, I reckon I have a good 1/4 of the land / cities. I guess I'm reasonably well off tech-wise too, so this will be interesting.. At least I haven't been crushed immediately, as I thought I'd be.

 

[citizen001]

In the early game (ancient age) on a standard map, which is more important: lotsa military to conquer the enemy, or lotsa settler to build and expand? (in this case there is quite a bit of land left).

i'm thinking if you build a lot of settlers, you'll get conquered and if you build a lot of military you fall behind in infrastructure and cities?!?!

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I prefer placing my cities at the best spots than at a cxxc patern.
And i don't defend them anyway.

 

[DragonRunner]

If you are having some trouble with republic, try going to monarchy. It has much higher unit support, and in republic, all units above the support limit cost 2 gpt. Monarchy is a good government, and I use it even when I don't go to war much.

 

[xiaoafei]

In the early game (ancient age) on a standard map, which is more important: lotsa military to conquer the enemy, or lotsa settler to build and expand? (in this case there is quite a bit of land left).

i'm thinking if you build a lot of settlers, you'll get conquered and if you build a lot of military you fall behind in infrastructure and cities?!?!

in monarch level games, i think to expand is still the best choice. because we can keep up with AI's pace through self developing. if the game is harder, we will need to fight whenever we have the chance to fight and win. in such games, one cannot compete AI in either expanding or developing without wars.
of course, if you want victories like diplomatic victory or cultural victory, you can still be a nice guy in those hard games. but as long as we want to dominate or conquer, we have to fight.

 

[citizen001]

ok thanks xiaoafei!

 

[SJ Frank]

If you are having some trouble with republic, try going to monarchy. It has much higher unit support, and in republic, all units above the support limit cost 2 gpt. Monarchy is a good government, and I use it even when I don't go to war much.

Not neccessarily disagreeing, but just to present a different view...

If you're having troubl with Republic, try growing your cities, and building marketplaces as soon as you can.

Each new citizen brings in at least 2 gold in Republic, even if you spend 1 of those gold in lux tax to keep the citizen happy, you're still gaining 1 extra gold.

Marketplace helps you getting 50% more gold from taxes, and helps keeping your citizens happy. Even if you don't have 3+ lux items, remember that marketplace also multiplies lux tax by 50%, so it is still worth it to build the marketplace.

 

[gunnerxtr]

Not neccessarily disagreeing, but just to present a different view...

If you're having troubl with Republic, try growing your cities, and building marketplaces as soon as you can.

Each new citizen brings in at least 2 gold in Republic, even if you spend 1 of those gold in lux tax to keep the citizen happy, you're still gaining 1 extra gold.

Marketplace helps you getting 50% more gold from taxes, and helps keeping your citizens happy. Even if you don't have 3+ lux items, remember that marketplace also multiplies lux tax by 50%, so it is still worth it to build the marketplace.

totally agree, this is how i get my deficets into profits, simply start irrigating tiles that no longer need to be mined and that will help you cites grow past 6

 

[saintly_saint]

Hi, thx for all the posts! Well, I'm on my way to winning a monarch game, and I was just wondering about the marketplace advice. Marketplaces eat up a fairly large amount of sheilds to be produced and when they are they hardly help (especially due to the fact that all my empire is made out of towns) So are they really worth it for the puny 3 - 4 gold they give ? Thx

 

[bingen]

Even if you don't have 3+ lux items, remember that marketplace also multiplies lux tax by 50%, so it is still worth it to build the marketplace.

Not in Civ3, used to though in earlier civs. That being said, marketplaces are still great.

About city placement, on vanilla and PTW the superior placement strategy is ring city placement(see the war academy article) if you do not find it too exploitative. Personally, even though it might be suboptimal I cannot stand to cram my cities too tight so I prefer CxxxC(adjusted for terrain). Although on the highest levels I cap some cities at size 6 that exist solely to build workers.

For the best advice you need to say what verision you are playing. Also, posting a save(from the late ancient age) can be helpful, or check out some succession games. Regent and Monarch are the most similar difficulty levels and the transition ought not to be too hard with some minor adjustments.