The Regent -> Monach jump

[Shr3dZ]

I was stuck on Monarch for the longest time, winning maybe 25% of them... until recently.

I bumped into Ducki's thread about his Emperor game when I started reading about the 4 settler pump, which ran into many other things that could improve my game. Im not much of a number cruncher and I dont like micromanaging half as much as most of you - but I have realised the importance of it, which is good!

I thought Id just write down the things that helped me most to give me the edge on winning Monarch game from now on:

1- place your cities closer together. i never did this before, i always tried to maximize city tiles without wasting any (ie. 19-21 tiles per city). This, it seems, is a bad idea. One b/c its not neccessary, and two, b/c the corruption that it envokes is nasty!

2- the 4 turn settler pump & the 2 turn worker pump. which for me is a 2tsp and a 1twp b/c I play with xcellerated production, which im wondering if the majority of players do or not, why would/wouldnt you? as an agricultural civ I think you need 2 food improved tiles (ie. wheat or cattle), im still new to all this so i could be off, then pump out the settlers and rex yourself into heaven.

3- indentify your power tiles. dont waste time mining a grassland in the early stages when theres a resource enhanced grassland beside it. head for those wheat and cattle squares first, build road on the way as to not waste another move going back. plus, dont cut down trees at random, they are more powerful than they look!

4- granaries in a couple of key cities. these would be the cities that will be dedicated to settler and worker pumps. before reading ducki's thread id never built a granary before, i just didnt think it was useful to quickly get to a city size 6 and then hit the brakes. now i can see that you need them to pump, plus being next to a river and the brakes are used till youre a 12 size so you get a lot more use from them.

5- use the luxury slider! ive never, ever used it before reading ducki's thread either. i figured it was better that an entertianer keep them happy than lower your science, but now i can see that have those fields being worked is much more important!

6- draft citizens from cities that arent growing/growing slowly, and use them to hurry city improvements in other cities.

i guess thats about all ive learned, ive played a couple of Monarch games since learning it and Ive won, or if i didnt finish the game, i was leading in tech, money, research etc. reasons for not finishing games are usually b/c i dont get horses, oil, rubber. one of the games i won by space race, i had to go and capture an english city with rubber just so i could finish the last SS piece (forget the name). and i took me so long to go get it that i only won by a few turns.

questions:

do you use xcellerated production? why or why not?

how do you use your specialists at the end of the game, do you micromanage them all?

anyways, i think im starting to ramble, so if you can think of anything you do to improve your Monarch game please share.

PS: first game after using these new strategies (notice the riflemen too, i never got rubber till 2 turns before the end of the game, nobody had it for trade either)

[Aqualung71]

I never use AP. Firstly, it's unbalancing.....growth rate is too fast, and you therefore need a lot more workers to ensure your tile improvements keep up with your growth. Secondly, the AI doesn't really understand the differeces and so is not as good at AP.

Also, the tech rate is too fast, which means certain units become obsolete before you can get much use out of them, and it really curtails the usefulness of certain wonders (once in a PBEM game using AP I built Knights Templar and got 2 Crusaders out before it became obsolete!).

I think you will find that most players do not use AP. And if you do use it regularly, I imagine it would be pretty difficult going back to normal if you are trying to compare your game against someone else's.

[Theseus]

BTW, if you really do prefer AP, I get the sense that a number of the MP players have more experience with it.

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, AP is ideal for MP.

That is pretty much what everyone uses for every game in MP over at the Ladder. It does help speed things up, though it does requier a different playstyle than most SP players are useful.

Most of what you learned in the thread is encompassed in my "Case for Food" article, but you may want to read it anyways, as there might be some other stuff you learn.

[Shr3dZ]

Oh dont worry Trip, I read all your articles, very good job indeed.

I first strated in Ducki's thread, then I start bouncing all over the place. The 4-settler pump, then to how 'food is power' and then to 'forestry', everything was helpful, plus it killed a lot of time while at work.

Hmmm, why would tech be faster when you have AP on since it only applies to resources and not trade? I may try my next game with AP off and see what happens...

What about my specialist question, do you guy micromanage them, making sure you have civil engineers, with maybe a couple cops, and an entertainer or something ? I think by default they all go towards entertianers, maybe b/c the AI likes to try for 'we love the __ day' or something...

[Barinthus]

Most of the time, AI seems to favor entertainers but I have seen instances in which AI defaults to using policemen, civil engineers, taxmen, and scientists. So I am not sure what kind of parameters AI is aiming for.

[joncnunn]

I've never seen the AI using policemen or civil enginners.

The AI sometimes uses all taxmen / all scientists if it can't work all tiles in the city raidus. In this case it's looking at the science rate:

0% : All taxmen
10 - 40% : All scientists
50% : Don't remember
60% - 90% : All taxmen
100% : Don't remember

These are never for happiness reasons, like a human would use for marginal unhappiness

[Golden Bear]

Can someone give me a title or link to Ducki's thread that was referred to above? I do OK at Monarch but I am actually trying to tune my game for a step up and any little suggestion is useful.

Funny thing though, that there are a few basic things that are fundamental to having a succesful game, but each person has a slightly different way they manifest them.

I usually play the French because I like the money but I recently had a nice game with the Americans on my first attempt at playing them. But I had to do things entirely differently.

Anyway, thanks for any links.

Carlos

[Shr3dZ]

Sure np, heres the thread that started it all, for not just me:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105424

Lots of pages, but theyre all pretty informative, and each one jumps to a different topic. Id say Ducki was the driver, but everytime he 'got it' he lost a lil control, hehe.

[Golden Bear]

Thanks, Shr3dz. I searched on Ducki and got about a thousand hits!

Plus, as you said, it kills time at work.

Carlos

[Shr3dZ]

Hehe no doubt man.

Yea, I searched Ducki too and got like 6 pages of hits, luckily I knew the thread I was looking for.

G'd luck.

[-SafaN-]

With me it depends: when there are few cities/units to manage i do it. I never bothered with setting up settler pumps altough i sometimes realise i made a 4turn pump. Worker-pumps i never made, i just let size6 cities build a worker. Once i get a huge empire i can't bother with the MM so i keep an eye on the 2 cores and that's it. The rest is on gouverner, and the workers on automate/no altering.
I almost never use specialists, i keep my cities rather small. I dont build hospitals btw. I really deteste pollution, since after u clean up u have to remember to reallocate the citizens.
Sometimes I build MTS and then hospitals, but only to get ennuf pop for a dom win.

Greetz

[Shr3dZ]

I really deteste pollution, since after u clean up u have to remember to reallocate the citizens.

If you have governors on, it should auto-allocate...

[Shr3dZ]

I think Ill add another strategy to the top of my list, dont really know if anyone bothers with it though. Read it from a Aeson post, he was saying that you can draft citizens in the later game (from cities that arent growing anymore) and then disband them to hurry along improvements in other cities. Seems like it might be MMing a bit too much but with railroads and the 'continental rally point' it might not be so bad...

[Theseus]

Rally points don't work for drafted units... but that said, I do this pretty often, especially if I have a very large empire. I will do this from cities at have pop 12 and significant excess food and before Hospitals. I also do it from any city that goes red (starving). It doesn't do much for high shield builds, but it works wonders for the basics.