Winning on Monarch

[Yaype]

I am sure there are threads such as this out there, but considering that the search function is not working and the fact that my situation may be different from other such situations, I went with my own post.

I am currently trying to make the leap from regent to monarch. I thoroughly dominate on regent from beginning to end, so I want a challenge. It just seems to me that monarch level is a much bigger leap than I had thought. I have kind of wussed out of a few bad starts when I was stuck in the middle of three other civs and suddenly, they all seem to want to attack, despite the fact that I have been nothing but nice to that point. Right now, I am going with the Celts on monarch, and I am on a continent with the Aztecs, Spanish, and the Zulus. I have about 10 or so cities (compared to a high of about 6 or 7 for the Spanish), and have taken the Aztecs down to one city (although they have rebounded by founding one other and taking over a Spanish city). This may sound like a good situation, especially considering I almost have the GL built, but this is after several other attempts that, as I said, I wussed out on. I scored about 2700 on two regent standard maps, and I was hoping for some feedback on my situation. Am I just trying too hard to get a perfect start? Should I just work harder to rough it out and try to get to ToE and finally jump ahead?

This may be my first post, but I am a longtime Civ fan, having owned Civ 1 and 2. I played Civ 2 on Emperor level most of the time, finding Deity to just be too much effort. I gave up on Civ 3 for a while (got it in April 2002 and did not really start playing until this summer) because it was so different from Civ 2, and therefore, my old strategies did not work. I have been checking out the forums here at CFC for a while, but as is apparent, this is my first post. I hope it is the first of many. Anyways, sorry if my background is not really on subject with the rest of what I have said, but I would appreciate some feedback on my situation. Thanks everybody.

 

[Renata]

I found that each time I moved up a level I had (at least) a few starts where I just seemed doomed. What you find out as you play more games at that level is that most of the time you're not as doomed as you think you are. Coming up from warlord to regent I used to have a horror of falling behind by more than one tech; now, playing mostly emperor/deity, I just laugh at tech deficits of six or more, especially prior to the industrial age. You learn how to catch up.

The other thing you learn in those first few painful starts is what *not* to do. On the lowest levels you can usually get away with ill-advised wars, bad trading sessions, incautious diplomacy, etc. The higher levels are more exacting, and beat at least a few bad habits out of you in short order.

What I'd suggest is to finish your current game that's going well, then go back to one or more of those games you abandoned (if you still have them), and see what you can make of them.

And of course, keep reading up around here -- you'll learn tons. Welcome to CivFanatics.

Renata

 

[Turner]

I, too, dominate on Regent. It's very frustrating, because it's not much of a challenge. But Monarch is too hard.

I would say, expand expand expand. The faster you can pump settlers out, the easier Monarch will be. In the Civ3 War Academy, Bamspeedy has a Deity Settlers routine that gets you pumping out a settler every four turns. There's also a link to it in his sig, if you come across one of his posts. This will definately help. I've found, if I can expand fast enough, the rest of the game is as easy as Regent for me. It's that First era, getting expanded fast enough.

Hope this helps.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Sounds very familiar...When I moved up from Regent to Monarch, for exactly the reasons you mention, I made the same experiences. Suddenly all opponents seem to gang up against you, and when you have your first, previously dominant Gallic Swords, they already have Pikes...

Some hopefully helpful thoughts:

You simply cannot use the same strategies.

Celts are a bad choice for higher levels. The GS are so expensive, you cannot easily build enough, considering a production bonus for the AI. Try other Civs; Chinese if playing aggressive, France if Builder style. The pattern is something like a Middle Age GA for Monarch. In Emperior, Romans are good...making it possible to survive, and your UU GA will be around the Middle Ages for the AI Civs.
Expansionist is a really good trait in the higher levels (of course not on Archipelago maps).
Play a few games on Continents, not Pangea (since fewer contacts for the AI mean they won't outtrade you as easily).
And, the most important change in my playing style: Upgrade. Not occasionally, but mainly. Do not build Swordsmen one by one, build tons of Warriors, save money, connect your Iron later and upgrade them all at once, overwhelm your opponent. Same goes for Chariots/ Horsemen/ Knights.
Trade. On Monarch, you still will be able to do a lot of research yourself, but not everything like in Regent and below. Research exotic Techs (not really sure which in vanilla PTW, since I exclusevly play the DyP mode, but I suppose Currency qualifies), and trade them.

 

[budweiser]

I wrote this and then the site went down. :

Hi, I am a lot like you in my civ experience. I am winning right now on Monarch as the french. Try them they are good. I am playing on a standard map with continents. This usually results in two land masses, each with 3 to 5 civs on it. So this is what works for me in this style of map. You need to plan to take over all the land on your land mass.

First, use terrain, and units to limit the expansion of your enemies while you pick the best spots for your core cities, settle on rivers and micromanage your infastructure. Keep cities 3 to 5 spaces apart. It helps if your capitol is in the center of your empire. Find out how to build a settle factory and expand rapidly to about 10 or 12 cities. A double ring of cities around your capitol would be ideal. By this time most of the free land will be used up. You should also have a force of warriors ready for a swordsman upgrade so you can wipe out your closest neighbor. You need to coordinate the army in sinc with your expansion and start killing when you are mostly done expanding. Build one or two barracks and make veterans, only attack with veterans and try to make leaders. Take away horses and iron from your enemies when in a war, you will end up with a military tecnological advantage and you can kill them at your leisure. Use leader for forbidden palace and create a second core of double ring cities if you have a big enough land mass.

Try to trade for maps so you know the world. Trade alot to keep up on techs. Trade to the richest civ first. Try expand your way into as many luxuries as you can. Granaries are important for rapid growth, but watch out for too many city improvements, try to keep costs down. You wont need many city improvements until after you are done expanding, maybe even after you kill off your first civ.. Don't bother with early wonders until the middle ages. Dont bother with the GL, its for lazy people. Get monarchy when your cities approach size 5 or 6 and switch govs for more production. This should be around about the time your first victim is dying (its your king against another country). .Switch to Republic when your research slows down, always try to maximise your income potential. This might be around the time you are completing the conquest of the land mass (its two or more united countries in a war of unification). Keep your people happy with one or two units, and as many luxuries as you can hook up. Dont be afraid to use the slider bar to help keep you people happy. Later on, trade or capture as many luxuries as you can.

You need to use all the parts of the game to succeed. Dont worry too much about the ai, they dont get much of a bonus over you and they cant micromanage or fight wars as good as you. Be meticulous and a little patient and you will easily win.

 

[Speaker]

Check out some of the Training Games in the Succession Game forum. They helped me big time. Sullla and Sirp led a couple really good ones as did Sirian.

 

[Yaype]

Thanks to everybody who took the time to reply. I think the basic thing I need to take out of all of this is that things will not go perfectly (or at least as well as on regent), so I just need to be a little more patient and try not to make little mistakes. Hopefully, in a month or two, I may be posting another message about how to move up to emperor . Anyways, thanks again.

 

[billindenver]

I know this is a pretty late reply, but that sounds like a pretty decent start to me. How did it turn out?

I'm a monarch/emperor player now. I don't recall my first monarch attempts being as tough as my emperor attempts, but that's probably just cause I have a bad memory.

Even on monarch now, it's tough for me to keep up in research if I attempt to do it all by myself. God forbid you get stuck alone on an island until Magnetism. You can easily end up a full age behind in tech.

One major key to monarch/emperor (esp emperor) is tech trading. You've got to use different strategies, because you can't research all techs yourself and hope to ever catch up or get ahead. You also can't hog techs for yourself (i.e., if you get medicine first, sell it immediately to the highest bidder).

In Civ I and II, it was easy to grab a HUGE tech lead and keep it forever. In Civ III, you may get 2-3 techs ahead, but never much more than that.