What to do when you are all alone?

[UberCivver]

I am taking my first stab at Monarch and turns out I am all alone on my continent. Now, this is fine by me since I am love being able to spread at my leisure, but I know not having contact with Civs until somone discovers optics can be a disadvantage. I would love to hear some advice on how to handle myself when I am all by myself. Thanks guys!
-UberCivver

 

[ToadFaerie]

Found a religion, build all the things that spread religion, and make sure you have sailing.

The hard question I would have is: focus on getting more than 1 religion, or beeline for optics. I guess it would depend on how many cities you can get before optics, and what victory you're aiming for.

The game I have right now, I've made contact with everyone before I built a boat due to my religion spreading to one of their cities.

 

[Paasky]

In civ3 the answer would be simple: Settlers, settlers & settlers. But now the best thing to do would be to get one religion & after optics, spread it like wildfire (if it already hasn't).

 

[Tunguska]

If you're alone you can always call a friend, everybody is (should be) dying to play civ4 wiith you...


...religion, defences and sailing/ optics wil do fine.
And watch out for barbs, In my current game I'm alone with barb cities on my continent, and getting rid of them is a real pain (early on).

 

[UberCivver]

Yah, using my "first to 3 cities" strategy/build-order, I usually crank out a great prophet long before anyone comes close to discovering theology, so I use my GP to get that religion. My main problem is that I want to expand too fast. I see all of this open land and I start drooling over the prospect of having the whole continent settled like yesterday. My next question is what to do when you finally do start meeting Civs. If you are behind, how would you go about making up the difference tech-wise, etc? If you are ahead, what are some ways to keep the advantage? I am finding that Monarch is somewhat of a big leap from Prince as Prince was from Noble.
Cheers,
UberCivver