Monarch

[jbp26]

After a few weeks, I was winning every game I played on Prince, and getting a score way above Augustus Caesar every time. No challenge. So, I bumped up to Monarch..

..and I don't have a chance! The jumped between these two difficulties does not compare to the smooth transition of Noble to Prince. All of the sudden, the AI cities are growing at what seems like double my rate, they're swarming units all over, I can't build any wonders and if I do, the delay in building military means I get overrun. This isn't to mention the tech lead they establish early and cruise on with. By the time I start putting together a horde of axemen, the AI is suddenly garrisoning with longbowmen. Then I pretty much have to throw in the towel.

I do have to admit, I like the challenge because before, I could play the exact same strategy with any civ I picked, whereas now, something as trivial as starting techs really determines much of the course of the game. Also, it makes you realize how important (or unimportant) wonders are.

Anyway- any advice for starting on monarch?

[foudres]

Yes.

First when you are in the lower lvl difficulties you can do nearling all you want and still be the leader anywhere.


Because the AI begin with free tech, free unit and you comes with big research penalties and increased cost maintenance you have to do only what is necessarry.

Every thing you produce/research/planning should have a purpose.

Why do you settle a city in here ? Is it really usefull to add an another city ? If it's not a wonderfull founding cite your likely not need it and it will destroy your research rate...

Why do you reseach tech X,Y,Z ? Is it usefull for you ? Does it give you a bonnus ? Will you be able to trade it to other AI or anybody has already the tech ?

Also you must specialise your cities... You should have at least a specialised commerce city and a specialised production city. Make sure you have at least one city that produce some great scientist points so you can have academies.

Specialisation is a key because a good commerce city will allow you to affort the cost of all other cities and will produce 400-700 beaker per turn on average.


And you have to go war early. Take or destroy (depending of the number of city you can afford) your neibour capital. Capital are always the best city and if an oponent lose it's capital he basically have lost the game. Making sure you have 1-2 crappy neigbour will allow you to conquest them easy later or prevent a backstab when you go against better civs.

Spam cotage everywhere. Research = Gold = cottage. Make them early near rivers and choose a financial leader. It will help a lot.

[Geronimo]

What are all of the bennefits that come with the financial trait?

[foudres]

financial = + 1 gold per title if the title produce at least 2 gold.

In pratice it increase your gold income a lot.. like 20% on the beginning... 10% on the end game...

Let just do some compare :

It's the begining of the game... you have, 8 cotage (4 on a river), one gold mine that have been worked at least 10 turn...
A normal civ will have : 34 commerce.
You are financial : 43 commerce.

You reseach 25% faster and have 25% more gold to spend.

On the long run let see what difference make on a commerce city :

You have printing.
You run 70% research
It's your capital, you use bureaucraty (+50% commerce)
You have all financial (+200% gold) and research building and 2 monasteries (+220% research)
You have 15 towns, 6 on border of a river

Normal civ :

Base commerce : 15*7 + 6 = 111.
After bureaucraty bonnus (multiplicative) : 166.5 commerce

Your research from your capital :
166.5 * 70 / 100 * 320 / 100 = 372 beaker per turn.
Your gold from your capital :
166.5 * 30 / 100 * 300 / 100 = 149 gold per turn.


Fiancial civ :
Base commerce : 15*8 + 6 = 126.
After bureaucraty bonnus (multiplicative) : 189 commerce

Your research from your capital :
189 * 70 / 100 * 320 / 100 = 423 beaker per turn.
Your gold from your capital :
189 * 30 / 100 * 300 / 100 = 170 gold per turn.

So a 13% increase with 51 beaker and 21 gold from the financial trait.



The difference do not seem so great at first but it's really important :

In civ what make the most difference ? It's technology.

With financial you tech rougly 10% faster So let's immagine that you have some early key tech like bureaucraty 20 turn sooner. For 20 turn you will have 50% a free 50% research boost, gold boost and production boost in your capital that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Then you can discover liberalism 30 turn faster... Because of this you gain a free tech and making sure that other will not be able to benefits from this free tech. They are 40 turn behind your in research. And we can continue see the increase advantage you get oposed to a normal leader ...


So financial make your research and gold income increase faster than a normal leader... You can afford more cities (so more conquest, more production than other civs), you can research faster (more powerfull units, increased research/production/commerce production).

By many players it's considered as the best trait you can choose.

[Shr3dZ]

Im the same way as the OPer.

I find it might be better to try to make a Prince game harder rather than an Monarch game easy. Try adding more barbarians etc. or something along those lines to make it so. I think the most fun is be be had at the Prince level, at Monarch I believe you MUST attack someone (at least) to get the gains you need to win at that level - I try to remain a peaceful player (most times) so Prince works best for me.

I remember making the exact same thread on the Civ3 forums way back in the day, back then I got all the normal sort of advice but the one that sticks out the most was to keep your cities closer together, no longer does that apply as now you settle wherever the resources are.

Besides being Financial, if anyone has any other suggestions for getting over the 'Monarch hump' Id be all ears... I just have a feeling what Im going to hear is 'go to war!'.

[MasterDave]

In order to have a chance to win on Monarch, you need to be able to build your cities quickly, in order to get a decent sized empire before the AI closes you off. In order to support those cities and maintain a decent level of science, you need a strong economy. Short of going to war, my favorite ways to do this are:

1) be financial
2) cottages, cottages, and more cottages
3) open borders with everyone who is willing and choose techs and buildings that maximize trade routes (foreign trade routes can be hugely lucrative)
4) found a religion (or several) and spread em around to cash in on the holy shrine (converting your neighbors to your faith also goes a looong way to keeping the peace and them wanting to trade techs and resources).

I have won cultural and space victories on Monarch with very little or no warfare. It is possible, but you need to have some luck with AI placement and resources if you are resolved never to start a war.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by foudres
financial = + 1 gold per title if the title produce at least 2 gold.

In pratice it increase your gold income a lot.. like 20% on the beginning... 10% on the end game...

Let just do some compare :

It's the begining of the game... you have, 8 cotage (4 on a river), one gold mine that have been worked at least 10 turn...
A normal civ will have : 34 commerce.
You are financial : 43 commerce.

You reseach 25% faster and have 25% more gold to spend.

On the long run let see what difference make on a commerce city :

You have printing.
You run 70% research
It's your capital, you use bureaucraty (+50% commerce)
You have all financial (+200% gold) and research building and 2 monasteries (+220% research)
You have 15 towns, 6 on border of a river

Normal civ :

Base commerce : 15*7 + 6 = 111.
After bureaucraty bonnus (multiplicative) : 166.5 commerce

Your research from your capital :
166.5 * 70 / 100 * 320 / 100 = 372 beaker per turn.
Your gold from your capital :
166.5 * 30 / 100 * 300 / 100 = 149 gold per turn.


Fiancial civ :
Base commerce : 15*8 + 6 = 126.
After bureaucraty bonnus (multiplicative) : 189 commerce

Your research from your capital :
189 * 70 / 100 * 320 / 100 = 423 beaker per turn.
Your gold from your capital :
189 * 30 / 100 * 300 / 100 = 170 gold per turn.

So a 13% increase with 51 beaker and 21 gold from the financial trait.



The difference do not seem so great at first but it's really important :

In civ what make the most difference ? It's technology.

With financial you tech rougly 10% faster So let's immagine that you have some early key tech like bureaucraty 20 turn sooner. For 20 turn you will have 50% a free 50% research boost, gold boost and production boost in your capital that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Then you can discover liberalism 30 turn faster... Because of this you gain a free tech and making sure that other will not be able to benefits from this free tech. They are 40 turn behind your in research. And we can continue see the increase advantage you get oposed to a normal leader ...


So financial make your research and gold income increase faster than a normal leader... You can afford more cities (so more conquest, more production than other civs), you can research faster (more powerfull units, increased research/production/commerce production).

By many players it's considered as the best trait you can choose.

thanks!

I wonder if there is a nice quantitative way to compare it to the research bennefits of +100% GP births of a philosophical civ.

They will gain beakers 10% slower but so long as they get at least 1 more GP than the financial civ in the time it takes to research 10 techs won't they be able to keep up with the financial civ that way?

I was thinking philo might be especially good for OCC since in that game the only way to further increase their hammers, beakers and gold is by adding super specialists once their only city's population tops out.

[rah]

For my OCC conquest games Philo was a must. The last game I just finished on Imortal, I had 25 super specialists. ( i did use a few engineers to build a couple of early wonders) I've had more in previous games.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
For my OCC conquest games Philo was a must. The last game I just finished on Imortal, I had 25 super specialists. ( i did use a few engineers to build a couple of early wonders) I've had more in previous games.

Thanks!

A few more general OCC questions if you don't mind.

Do you use pacifism to boost it further?

Do you try to make your city a port city?

Do you move around much from turn 1 to scout the best site for your city?

Do you found your city on a hill for the extra city tile hammer and better defense?

Do you always play the smallest world?

How many AI civs can you manage share that world size with?

On the highest difficulty levels with tech trading disabled are you able to bribe civs into war against each other? Are such bribes pretty much limited to cold hard cash?

[Blake]

For OCC the civics of Bureaucracy and Pacifism are basically static choices - nothing really compares. Maybe very late in the game you might want to replace Pacifism with Free Religion to improve relations, if you are spiritual it's nice to switch to org.rel while building wonders. Otherwise Pacifism just rules for OCC and you should get it ASAP.

I wouldn't however recommend lightbulbing Philosophy with a great scientist, you can do this but I'd prefer to first build an Academy and then just settle ALL future great scientists, in OCC you can research Philosophy the old fashioned way quite easily because OCC's enjoy such strong science.

[jbp26]

I just won my first monarch game, via spacerace (though I was 2% away from domination) and got a score of Augustus Caesar. Definitely much more interesting than Prince- the AI stayed competative with tech until the veyr end, and managed to steal many of the late game wonders from me. Very interesting game.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by jbp26
I just won my first monarch game, via spacerace (though I was 2% away from domination) and got a score of Augustus Caesar. Definitely much more interesting than Prince- the AI stayed competative with tech until the veyr end, and managed to steal many of the late game wonders from me. Very interesting game.

It does seem like augustus ceasar scores are too low. Every game seems to end with such a ranking.

[rah]

Originally posted by Blake
For OCC the civics of Bureaucracy and Pacifism are basically static choices - nothing really compares. Maybe very late in the game you might want to replace Pacifism with Free Religion to improve relations, if you are spiritual it's nice to switch to org.rel while building wonders. Otherwise Pacifism just rules for OCC and you should get it ASAP.

I wouldn't however recommend lightbulbing Philosophy with a great scientist, you can do this but I'd prefer to first build an Academy and then just settle ALL future great scientists, in OCC you can research Philosophy the old fashioned way quite easily because OCC's enjoy such strong science.

Agreed. I'll use a GE to build the pyramids to get representation and maybe one for Iron Works.
One GS for the Academy, and everything else is settled.
(rarely I'll use the GA from Music to move my borders out a bit quicker if I'm really penned in.

Do you use pacifism to boost it further?
YES

Do you try to make your city a port city?
I'm usually playing conquest so I have to have a port in case there are any islands


Do you move around much from turn 1 to scout the best site for your city?
I play balanced so if you move too much you risk moving out of the range of the oil. But will move one or two squares


Do you found your city on a hill for the extra city tile hammer and better defense?
If possible but not always.
If you let them get to your city in an OCC game, you've probably already lost. The extra hammer early is helpful.


Do you always play the smallest world?
No, I usually play on a small pag world but not tiny or duel.

How many AI civs can you manage share that world size with?
I add a couple to the normal small world to increase the tension between the AIs

I turn off tech trading also, since the new mod makes them trade a lot. And since I'm usually going conquest, after the middle of the game, I'm at war with everyone (or at least have the pissed) so since I have no option to trade techs, I don't let them either.