How Do They Do It?

[Dactyl]

I've played many, many games on Monarch level without a lot of ultimate success. The problem becomes that, by mid-game, either I'm keeping up with the AI in number of military units but I'm behind in tech, or I'm concentrating on tech and am in last place militarily. How the hell do the AI civs both create huge numbers of military units and surge ahead in tech, even when they are relatively small? I can't see how it works out financially.

[Blake]

Simple. The AI recieves bonuses.

[djpsychonaut]

They get discounts on tech, unit upkeep, and city maintenance. I think on Noble, you are essentially on even terms with the AI.

[Urban Ranger]

Of course. The computer players have massive bonuses on the Monarch level. You have to really sharpen your strategy to even have a chance.

[Cort Haus]

They also trade techs amongst themselves very freely. Manipulating the AI into fighting each other can reduce the effects of this, so Diplomacy skills can become quite handy at this level.

I think that trade rates are affected by relations, so civs that don't like each other charge higher rates, and/or hold back tech, so there are less trades.

[BigWilly1974]

I've now gotten the hang of Monarch whereas I used to struggle like you said...good military, weak tech, or vice versa.

The main things I've done is to make the capital a beaker juggernaut...starting with assigning early scientists and creating that first academy. The other thing I do is focus more on laying down some cottages. I dont' go overboard, but I used to focus mostly on food and hammers and end up wasting a lot of productivity because the cities would grow too fast and I'd have unhappy or unhealthy citizens.

Make a more concerted push in the early game to get at least one super science city going, and you'll be surprised at the difference it makes in mid-late game.

The other thing...try and research techs that the AI isn't...and go deep where possible and from time to time you'll land a tech that you can use to trade for many techs from the various AIs.

[Velociryx]

Key to beating the pants off of the computer:

1) Production, especially in the ancient age. Reason this is vital is that we're all under the gun, time-wise (only 400-odd turns in the game). The quicker you build stuff (military, multiplicative infrastructure), the quicker it starts paying you dividends. Especially in the case of infrastructure, where the dividends are compounded (remember the quote, and let it burn into your brain, "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.")

2) Money. The more I play, the more I find myself gravitating to Financial Civs (with Cathering being my current favorite...the synergy between creative and financial just ROCKS). Build cottages. LOTS of cottages. A fully developed cottage generates as much coin as a gold mine, and only one less than your palace. That's a LOT of gold coming out of one tile. More, by far, than the vast majority of the trade routes you'll see (you might have a few trade routes that top a cottage, but the vast majority of them will not). No such thing as too many cottages, cos money in Civ works just like money in the real world, and how many times have you ever thrown your hands up in disgust and said, "damnit! I just have too much freakin' money!" (if you have this problem, I'll PM you my address, cos I can surely help you there! )

Production in the early game to get yourself set up. Money a bit later on, to finance the needs of the Empire.

-=Vel=-

[Yosh]

The strategies outlined above are all good ones, but they miss what I think it critical to being comptetitive in monarch+: aggressiveness.

By nature, I'm an early builder/late warmonger type; I like having all my cities nice and built up, and then war when I have nothing left to build.

I've learned many times the hard way, that pure building is not a winning strategy above noble.

Since the AI gets so many bonuses against the human player, the only way to be competitive is to use your super civ-Judo throw, and turn the AI bonuses into an advantage for yourself!

For example, my latest game on Monarch (which I'm hoping I'll win, but it'll be close!), I rolled Cyrus as my leader and began on a 2 tile-wide peninsula; about 10 tiles North of me was Hatsheput, closing off the rest of the continent - I first saw the start and groaned, thinking that it was one of the WORST starting spots ever!

I thought about it though, and decided to play it out, thinking to myself "What Would DeepO Do?" (it could've been Vel, or Aeson, or any one of the other incredible contributors I've read on these boards, just DeepO came to mind first!)

Well to skip some off-topic specifics about that game, the end result is that I ended up leveraging the AI's tendency to found cities against it; I let Hatty develop all this land, and then kindly took it from her as a donation!

This is incredibly tough to do if you are not focusing and specializing your tech tree, however. The reason I was able to walk all over Hatty so early was because a) I popped Iron close enough for me to make use of it, b) Hatty is a peace-ful type, c) instead of wandering through the tech forest, I made the path to fit my plan (of conquest). Like many things in this game, specialization and concentration of force (or beakers, or commerce, etc) is the key to success.

Later in the game, I met Frederick, on a separate continent with Tokugawa, and an Indian (whom I never met, poor guy didn't last long between Freddy and Toku!). He was the leader by a decent margin score-wise, and knowing that I would not be able to catch up by building or teching, I declared war on him and pillaged him quite nicely - Frederick hasn't been a real threat since then!

Much later on, the conquest of the Japanese again leveraged the AI's bonuses for my own use, by supplying me with a mature, fully developed infrastructure and cities.

In summary, since I sometimes wander around my points, monarch+ is beatable, but only if your strategy is focused (some points below include things from posts above for clarity):

• trade for techs by beelining deeper into the tree than your opponents


• early production is nice, but don't forget to devote a city or two to scientific research; focus cottages, commerce buildings, etc. there.


• Take advantage of the nice real estate that your neighbor develops for you (make sure that you pick one that nobody else likes for best results)


• ALWAYS do something for a strategic purpose! I.E., don't build a market in a city unless you have a good reason to do so, and not because you can't think of anything else to build (in those cases, you should almost ALWAYS build a unit!)

I know my list wasn't the most-inclusive, but I hope that it helps you out!

[AgentTBC]

Velociryx:

I'm a little surprised that you are liking Catherine so much because of her Creative trait. I can see loving the Cossack since with even a mediocre start you'll be an unstoppable juggernaut for a period a time if you play your cards right but I've always found Qin's Industrious trait a lot more useful.

I've never had a problem with my cultural borders. Creative would certainly allow you to forget about Stonehenge but other than that what do you like about it as compared to Industrious?

[Quillan]

I'd imagine it's because it's one less thing you have to build.

[BigWilly1974]

I used to be a big fan of creative, but I find my tastes on traits are still totally in flux. I began loving Industrious and Creative. Then it was Financial + Creative. Then I played a few games as the Chinese for Financial + Industrious with good success.

I played a random game this past weekend where I randomed the Incans. While I've not played Aggressive civs much, and had thought it wasn't a hugely valuable trait, the combo of Aggressive and the Incan UU has me off to my best ever game. Nothing like the Quecha and Aggressive in the early game to roll opponents, especially when you use pop & chop to churn out large UU armies quickly.

[Velociryx]

I'm rather surprised I like the creative trait as much as I do, because I've never had a problem with border expansions, either, but I'm finding that creative makes a masterful pairing with Financial for a number of reasons, and that both of these traits suit my playing style to a tee.

Things I've observed so far:
* Keeping cities you wrest from rival civs is significantly easier, allowing you to build those all-important courthouses BEFORE rushing culture enhancing infrastructure in conquered territories (which plays well with the financial aspect of my current fav civ, too!)

* I kick myself every time I feel the urge to build an Obelisk. 30h for an Obelisk is a bad investment, IMO, when for 60h more, I can get twice the culture output AND a research bonus (Lib) as the city grows. This, combined with the fact that I never make Mysticism an early priority in any case, means that my newly founded (or captured) cities will see their first border expansion naturally (courtesy of the Creative trait), before my Library (or later, Theater) finishes, and those two will combine to make my NEXT border expansion come even more quickly.

* Against any non-creative civ, and with only paying nominal attention to cultural improvement, I can use culture as a weapon that's every bit as effective as swordsmen or horse archers. Closing previously opened borders can be a devastating blow to a hemmed in rival, and it's exceedingly easy to capture and claim silly amounts of territory VERY early on with this trait (I've completely shut down at least one civ in every game I've played with this trait...utterly marginalized, and then conquered them without doing anything but closing my borders and letting Creative do the rest).

* I've been gravitating toward Epic/Raging Barb games, and as you might expect, Creative is a real powerhouse in those settings, pushing back the FoW with ease, and limiting my exposure to the barbs. Further, the increased number of turns on Epic gives the trait yet another kick, in that my aggregate, civ-wide culture total is even higher than it otherwise woulda been. In this regard, the culture kick is used as a "defensive weapon" that expresses itself in the form of higher defense bonuses, sooner, and in making it easy to set up a pillage zone in places where I share a border with a rival civ.

In comparing Creative with Industrious, I find that:

* In the early game, I don't build enough ancient age wonders for Industrious to provide me with any real kick (at least not one that I can't get in other ways to snag the wonders I really want).

* By the Mid-game, I've got better production than the AI, and comparable tech (this last is thanks, in no small part to that lovely Financial trait!), which means that even if I get a relatively late start on a wonder I'm gunning for, I can beat the AI to it in most cases.

* By the late game, I've got a solid tech lead and don't need the boost to finish the wonder ahead of my rivals (not to mention the fact that by this point, again, thanks in no small part to financial, I'm usually rush-buying them after a few turns anyways).

I do enjoy industrious, but IMO, the only civ that does it "well" is India, with their Fast workers + Industrious. The rest...eh...don't really excite me much.

Re: Cossacks....nahhh, they're not a bedrock reason for loving the Civ, but they ARE a nice bonus!

-=Vel=-

[Dactyl]

My real problem seems to be that I am by temperament a builder and I keep putting off building military units or attacking enemy units in favor of building that extra improvement. Sooner or later that ends up hurting me, and usually badly. I always tend to be last in number of military, which brings up another point. In another post, Vel suggests building military units until you're three or four in military ranking. However, in my experience, the AI civs seem to build so many military units that, if you try to keep up, you'll end up paying so much in maintenance that it just kills your research.

[Velociryx]

Dactyl...that's your Civ talking to you....if you can't keep pace in both military and research, that's your civ grabbing you gently by the throat and telling you what it needs. In this case, it needs more money! Solution....cottages, dyes, gold mines, silver mines, religions....*anything* to bring in that coin.

-=Vel=-

[Shr3dZ]

Re: Creative civs

Im in the middle of a game now as the Egpytians, I started in the middle of a north/south continent. At the location I started at the landmass is only around 10 tiles wide, with only my first 2 cities I was able to block both the AIs north and south of me from meeting eachother, thanks in part to my settler being the first thing built. I kept my borders closed for quite some time to be able to maximize tech trading - the only downside is my early religion didnt spead so much, but since then its consumed the entire continent.

None of which would have been possible without the creative trait, the time it wouldve taken to build my first obelisk (after researching it too) and wait for the border to pop, wouldve been the time it wouldve taken the AI to slip past me...