Alexis the Monarch - Trying BtS For The First Time

[LexiSilva]

-If this is the wrong forum, may a mod please move it. Thank you.-

Greetings, Realms Beyond community!
This is an ongoing report of not only my first BtS game, but my first game on Monarch difficulty! For someone who's only played Noble once and Prince once in a succession game, this is a major challenge!

Map Settings:

• Big And Small Map Script
  
• Standard Size
  
• Rocky Climate
  
• Normal Game Speed
  
• No Vassal States, No Events
  
• Variants: None - Just win!
  

I will be playing as Queen Elizabeth, my favourite leader! Philosophical means more great people to use: maybe more Golden Ages, and Financial is certainly good to play with. Let's see what our map is!



Double Corn, a lake, 2 wines, a spice, and a river! Very good! Now I already have a fabulous choice! I can go one south for one of the wines and still own everything but the spice; or, I can stay on the lake so it is a bit more profitable with a lighthouse...



My warrior goes southeast to find anything of interest, and he finds a village and a few grasslands! I decide that I need a 0/2/3 tile (the western wines) and go southwest! To found London! A northern city could better use the corn as it also receives spices. I think this might bite me in the butt, sacrificing food for production and commerce.



Oh my gosh another village! I start on a Worker, and Agriculture.

Thank you for seeing my first turn of my Monarch game!

- LexiSilva

[LexiSilva]

Turn 1: I get a map of the ocean from the first spotted hut. Gee, thanks...



Thank you, London's hut! We know how to build roads!
Turn 9: We start on Bronze Working, since Agriculture is finished, and we got gold from a hut north of London.
Turn 13: Even more gold!
Turn 15: We start on a Warrior since our Worker is finished. He goes to the corn (though I just wasted a worker turn before I even though about it.
Turn 16: Hinduism FIDL, and my Warrior gets beaten up by panthers.
Turn 17: We lost the warrior. Here's the mapped territory, no civs met:





Hi, Pericles! Nice to meet someone; though that Creative trait might not be good if he settles near us. And Buddhism was FIDL.

[LexiSilva]

Just so you guys know, I'm encouraging comments! ^_^
And, to be frank, advice would be really helpful!

- LexiSilva

[Dp101]

I don't believe you can build lighthouses on lakes without also being adjacent to salt water.

[WilliamLP]

I decide that I need a 0/2/3 tile (the western wines) and go southwest! To found London! A northern city could better use the corn as it also receives spices. I think this might bite me in the butt, sacrificing food for production and commerce.

Giving tough love. There are decisions in Civ which are close and where you can lean either way, but not this one. Having the two irrigated corn tiles in your capital would be massively superior. Food is everything, doubly so for the start of a game. You can still use the corn in a northern city that way, in fact an amazing second city would be one that shares _both_ the corn tiles. That is one of the most non-intuitive things to learn about the game, that sharing food tiles isn't inefficient at all, but actually is extremely desirable and can even increase the power of the tile a lot.

[LexiSilva]

That is one of the most non-intuitive things to learn about the game, that sharing food tiles isn't inefficient at all, but actually is extremely desirable and can even increase the power of the tile a lot.

.....oops.... xD Thanks for being tough about it, though. ^^;
But yeah, I don't understand how sharing could be beneficial to two cities if only one can use it at a time.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah. Not only are plains hills wines pretty mediocre tiles (a riverside grassland cottage would be superior), but you won't even be able to improve them for a long time (besides mines). Plus you can't really spare the food to work them, if you also want to grow at a decent pace.

[LexiSilva]

Welp.... goddangit I have disgraced us all.... xD At least there's no variant here!

[Mardoc]

Don't beat yourself up over it, we all had to learn that ourselves.

But yeah, I don't understand how sharing could be beneficial to two cities if only one can use it at a time.

Well, it's mostly because it lets you use the food tile all the time. Food tiles are most beneficial when you're growing a city. Sometimes you need to pause growth, though. You've run out of happiness because the city has gotten too big, or because you've been whipping too much. If you share the food with another city, then you can pause City1 while City2 takes the food and grows with it. If you don't share, then you have to waste the food one way or another.

You could apply the food to workers and settlers, but usually it's more efficient to build those with whips and regrow in between - you can usually get 2 hammers for each food by whipping and only one hammer/food by building workers with it. You could also not work the tile, but then it's completely wasted instead of half-wasted. Or use 'avoid growth', which again basically throws away the extra food. It's much easier to just swap the tile to another city.

About the only exceptions I can think of are if you barely have any food at all, so a city just can't let it go. Like if you've got plains wheat and the rest of your tiles also plains.

[WilliamLP]

Don't beat yourself up over it, we all had to learn that ourselves.

Oh yeah, I second this for sure. I played for years, just the occasional single player game, and could maybe beat Monarch, but Emperor would be really iffy. And I played in the intuitive way that everyone starts out doing: try to find a city layout where cities are spread out and minimize overlap so every city grabs the most possible land and resources. And I didn't build enough workers and didn't prioritize food enough. At first, the right amount of food and workers will feel like _way_ too much food and way too many workers for your sensibilities, trust me.

I'm responding with the assumption that you want to get up to speed to eventually play a multi-player game here and not fall way behind immediately. If you just want to have fun versus the AI, carry on. It's one of the deepest strategy games ever created and you can get months or years out of it at any and every level.