More than 3 cities, my economy collapses

[trev]

Also check your city screens to make sure the city citizens are making use of the cottages and gold mines etc, often the city manager will allocate them differently, eg on forest/grassland squares rather than cottages

[Blake]

And set the governor priorities to "food+hammers+commerce" this will (basically) tell it not to be a doofus and that you do indeed want your workers to be bringing in maximum stuff.
Seriously, otherwise the slacker just puts the workers anywhere he wants.

[Arrian]

Che,

I typically play on Prince, but Monarch costs aren't THAT much higher...

Playing a FIN and/or ORG civ should help. Imran's advice about measured expansion is good too.

Something else... during the early expansion phase, I often drop down to ~50%, particularly if I'm neither ORG nor FIN. Once you hit that level, you need to stop & consolidate, or at least consider it (I've pressed on and dropped lower if I deemed it necessary/desirable).

Some other things:

Religion + a holy shrine can do wonders for your budget.
edit: you mentioned that in your OP.

Some civics are expensive (organized religion and caste system come to mind).

Building "every building" in each city is a bad idea. You want to go for some specialization. I typically try to set up one high-production/low commerce city for the Heroic Epic, and I don't bother with anything other than military in that city unless I have to in order to keep the city happy/healthy. Library? Useless in that city. Market? Only if necessary for happiness. That city wants, most likely: barracks, forge, granary, temple. Conversely, there will be cities where a barracks is a waste, but a library is a great idea.

I'm not a bad Civ player, Che, and I consider Monarch frustratingly difficult in the early game. The AI starts with the (IMO) massive advantage of a free worker right off the bat. Sure, the AI isn't all that smart, but a worker from turn one... yikes. That's why they spread so fast.

-Arrian

[samspock]

Play as Inca and turn the ai advantage into a disadvantage. I have been playing a lot of normal speed, tiny map games (jam in 7 ai's ) on Monarch and I can pretty much rule from turn one. Quecha's are the natural counter to the free archery that Monarch ai's start with. It's actually harder to do this on Prince than Monarch!

The first Quecha goes and snags one of those free workers. I then crank the quecha's out and capture their city (can't beat a capital city site as your second city!) All the while I am researching what I need for cs slingshot plus bronze. I then chop (nerfed is better than nothing) a barracks and severl more quecha's and take out a second civ. They usually have a second city down by then so you will end up with 4 citys, probalby two or three workers, a decent sized army and lots of plunder gold to ride out the negative commerce.

After that spend some time building up and getting your economy in good shape. Don't be scared of 70% tech rate. I run that most of the time. 70% of a 250gdp economy is much better than on a 100gdp economy.

Once you get to a profit at 70% then look for someone else to kill. You probably won't be able to do that until you can build macemen. Macemen plus catapaults are your ticket to a win. Repeat until the domination kicks in.

Most games I have played that way have ended in a domination win between 1000 and 1500 ad.

Oh yeah, relgion is not much of a factor when I do this. The one I finished last night I founded 4 relgions and captured the holy city's for the other three but did not build a single shrine. I also did not build any misionarys and only spread with the freebies.

The game before I went the other way and founded all 7 then had a killer GPP factory in my first captured city (5 seafood's!) and managed to build 5 of the shrines.

[Arrian]

Well, you're kinda fixing the game with the maps settings there...

But yeah, going with a more aggressive approach (worker-stealing, etc) is one way to counter the advantage the AI gets.

-Arrian

[MasterDave]

I regularly win on Monarch... and get spanked on Emperor. However, even on Monarch on most Pangea type maps I find myself hemmed in by the AI empires after building four or five well-placed cities. I tend to do slower-growth openings such as the Civil Service Slingshot and Pyramid building, so my expansion does not usually outpace my economic growth too badly (I will rarely go below 80 or 90% science unless I start conquering lots of AI cities). Even on Monarch level, I find that stealing a worker or two from your neighbors very early in the game is usually fairly safe, as it takes an AI a long time to mount any sort of of a counterattack, and losing that worker cripples them in the long run. The extra worker becomes very valuable in building those extra cottages needed for a healthy economy. I also try to found at least one religion (usually Hinduism or Confusionism as part of the slingshot) so that I can build a Holy Shrine while expanding (five or six extra gold per turn really helps in the early game).

Building three or four new cities with settlers and then conquering the rest from Barbs or AI's is not a bad way to go at all. Building lots settlers is expensive, as it inhibits population growth and commerce revenue. Building troops and taking cities from the AI's pays off quite well, in both plunder and getting cities that have already grown a few population points. I find that with four cities, I can build enough troops to take on a weak neighbor quite handily on Monarch.

[chequita guevara]

It was the marathon setting that seems to have been doing me in. When I switched to normal, no problems.

[Jaybe]

One or two scientist specialists can make alot of difference.

The pacing is just different with Marathon. When v1.61 came out I played my first game at Epic, but being used to Marathon my pacing was all out of whack, with other civs leapfrogging my tech supremecy right & left.

[DaShi]

Only 3 cities. Try a culture victory.

[Arrian]

Oh. I've never tried marathon. I've played one game on Epic. That explains why Che's experience was so different than my own.

-Arrian

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by DaShi
Only 3 cities. Try a culture victory.

He'll need about every religion then, since he can only build one cathedral of each religion.

[DaShi]

Bah, I've won cultural without any cathedrals.

[Jaybe]

Be specific guys, you talkin' about Cathedrals or the money-making Shrines?

[Dauphin]

I would assume they mean Cathedrals, where you need a certain number of temples in order to build one (is it 4 to 1 ratio?) and get the +50% culture boost.