Crucial Moment - advice sought

[heliodorus04]

Attached is my savegame file, with the standard Civ4 plus whatever the official release patch is (newest patch, just uploaded today for me).

I'm very happy with what I've done to this point considering I was alone on an island until about 10 turns ago. VERY fortunately for me, the two powers I've contacted sold me world maps (and I got the circumnavigation bonus from that, too!)

My problem seems to be expansion at this point. I can fill in my island, but if I don't formulate a plan on where to take the game from here, I'm going to fall behind.

It strikes me that my city-production base is perhaps too low for war, but I'm tempted to go to war with France, because he is also alone on an island. IF I can figure out a way to get a toehold on his island and fight a war against him, I can have two island-continents to myself. That would be good.

So my debate was whether I should go Police State (I have pyramids), Vassalage, Theocracy (I founded Taoism, and it's all over my island). But do I really have enough production to get into that war? What will it cost me in setbacks to coin and research?

Otherwise, being new at having this level of success on Prince, I don't know what other strategies are available to me to push forward. I know my military defense is a problem right now...

Screenshot of the world would be included, but I can't figure out how to make it appear here, so the best I can do is the save file.

I'm definitely behind the curve in the number of cities compared to the other two powers I have met. I think I have room to start two more useful cities, one on the west and one on the east, plus maybe a non-useful one in the north.

[Velociryx]

I'm gonna grab the latest patch and load your game.....will be back in a bit!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Okay, just finished taking a preliminary look around....this is still bare bones at this point, and I'm gonna go back to the game in just a second and continue looking, but at a glance, here's what I see:

* You've got a good landmass with a fair number of specials on them. Unfortunately, not all of those specials are currently in use. Several of them are terraformed and prepped, but are either a) being passed over in preference for less productive tiles, or b) not currently in your cultural borders at all. First thing I would do is remedy that right away! (and you're already building a settler, which is good).

* Second thing is...you're using specialists, and I applaud that, but you've got a few in a bunch of different cities....from a GPP perspective, this is definitely inefficient. I suspect that you're prolly running representation, and are assigning them anyplace you can for the extra beaker output (I'll go back and check momentarily), and if so, then that's cool, but I'm willing to bet that we could do some tightening up and tweaking and get you even better aggregate outputs. That will be the next thing I check on.

* Four workers ain't enough. We've got a LOT of work ahead, and a lot more coming. I'm gonna play this game out myself, and one of the first things I'm gonna do is double our number of workers.

* You're 4th in hammer production...that's viable enough to fight a war with, but you're dead last in military....by a lot. IF you're jonsing for a war, then we're gonna need a crash building program, and it's gotta start soon. We've also only got two galleys in the navy, and that ain't gonna be enough to transport more than an annoyance force over the water.

* Rather than plan for a near-term war, I would agitate for an exploration fleet (a caravel could be completed in washington in a scant three turns, and you're already building an explorer), and while you're researching Astronomy, let's get in the water for real (now that you have +1 movement point on all ships, it's almost criminal not to), and get over to what appears to be a sizeable landmass east of you and north of Louis. It looks to be maybe 2/3rds the size of the isle you're on, and if so, that land right there would be enough to catapult you into first place, land wise. Of course, that's gonna mean even more workers, and a bunch of settlers, to say nothing about the troops we'll need to protect this overseas empire.

And then of course, said island would make an excellent springboard for an invasion of France.....

Early recommendations would go something like this:

We definitely need troops (either to secure yonder empty isle, or to tangle with france), and we really don't even have enough to push back an invasion from the big continent, so troops need to take a priority.

Exploration fleet gets wet ASAP, and we head over to yonder isle to have a look and see about setting up shop there.

Tighten up the homeland, and make better use of the resources we got (including a couple of new cities to take advantage of unused specials)

And a long-range plan to absorb the French.

We also NEED to devote a caravel to making contact with the other civs....there's money to be made in trading, and we can maybe get some open borders arrangements and push our religion....

I'm gonna go study some more, and will be back.

BTW, how do you wanna win this one? Space Race? Domination?

I ask cos, I intent to play it out from this point, and I want to mirror your desired path to victory.

-=Vel=-

[heliodorus04]

One way I've never won is culturally, but frankly, I don't even know how. If it's possible to do so in this game, I'd like a blueprint. I assume, however, doing that means staying off of a war footing with Louis. That then depends on who and what is to the east.

I'm like you, Vel, in that I like to be at peace unless I have a specific war objective.
I think that in the near term, depending on what is out to the east, my plan will be to colonize eastward, then "absorb" the French. I expect that will take me into Modern? That's as long term as I can think on this.

I have no practice on Prince getting out of the Ren era into Industrialized successfully. I'm having a heck of a lot of fun on this game so far, though. Thanks for taking a look at it.

I'll follow your recommendations and essentially consolidate my island plus expand to available new ones.

[Velociryx]

This late in the ballgame, I'm not sure if we've got time for a cultural win, but I'll go back and have a look-see, and then, I'm gonna play ahead as well, and we can compare notes on what happened.

My plan will be: Having washington build two caravels for the moment, one to move toward the big continent, and the other to explore the (empty?) island East and slightly north of us.

While that's happening, I'm gonna re-arrange some stuff on the homeland and see if we can squeeze more efficiency and more total outputs out of our homeland. Prolly, there will be a period of adjustment where we actually move backwards, but hopefully it won't take too long.

-=Vel=-

[heliodorus04]

When you say "re-arrange some stuff on the homeland" what are you talking about?

I have a good selection of civics available to me, and I'm making money hand over fist, it would seem.

Specialists?
What's the philosophy on them, then?

[Velociryx]

Have played to 1550 so far. Turned off most of the specialists for the moment (we're still doing good tho, cos we've got a few super specialists, and they're giving us a nice kick). Two caravels in the water and the stuff you had been building is done, due to a round of pop rushing. Founded LA in 1540 in the north country to take advantage of the wheat farm that was unused (irrigated, but unused), and the whales two tiles northward.

I turned off the culture, and went 100% science for now, on the thinking that Astronomy is key to our very survival. First caravel headed toward the big continent, and have met japan (broke, 4 techs behind. sold him drama real cheap but it didn't seem to improve his dour mood). Met spain (down to one city...Madrid) also dirt poor, annoyed with us, and 4 techs behind. Met Inca...ALSO annoyed, broke, and 3 techs back. So basically, no one will open borders with us. That's fine. I think that once Astronomy is ours, I'll back fill and get guilds, then run some Mercantilism to get the free specialist in each city.

Speaking of, I just got a great merchant in washington. Added him to the city to offset the gold loss for 100% sicence. We're doing good so far tho!

Second caravel is going up to pick up the 'splorer, and then we're bound for yonder isle!

I'll keep it pegged at 100% sci until we switch to Mercantilism tho....gotta get that in a hurry and get ourselves sorted out. Then prolly free religion too, to see if we can defrost some international relations.

-=Vel,=-

[Velociryx]

Have played thru 1630...sadly, "Yonder Isle" is not as big as we first thought. Room for 4 tightly placed cities, and that's my plan. I've got an archer and 2 settlers over there at present, and have been wheeling and dealing for techs, but have not given up Astronomy, cos right now, we've got a monopoly on Galleons, and I want to milk it.

Found another smallish island that's got some potential (somewhat south and west of the big continent). Gonna shoot some guys over to investigate, and prolly seed it with settlers too.

That'll give us a far flung, but solid empire, and lots of options.

Big slugfest looks like it's been occuring on the big continent for a long time. They're exhausted. The only two civs that we have to worry about are cathy and mansa musa (both pleased with us, after adopting free religion). I foresee some good long term alliances in our future....

Tech-wise, we're:
-2 with Mansa Musa
-1 with Cathy
+2 with Incas
+3 with France
-1 with Germany
+1 England
+5 Spain
+8 Japan

So not bad....

At the moment, we're actually shrinking, cos I've had us on a steady diet of rushing (new civics program for the US, nationalism, free religion, and mercantilism (for now)). It's giving us play with representations while I work our cottage tiles to get them built up. Eventually, we'll need to move to USuf to start rush buying with cash in all our new towns that are springing up everywhere (2 so far, 4 more planned on one isle, and investigating another). FP will prolly go on "Yonder Isle" but that's a bit down the road yet.

We're pretty much in the driver's seat, diplomatically, and can prolly crush whomever we want....when we get a military that is! (working on it...been drafting musketmen WHILE pop rushing, so our population has been seriously dented lately, but we're recooping...

-=Vel=-

[heliodorus04]

Pop rushing a lot, eh?
I hardly ever do it - I'm so "old civ" in mentality...

I'll have to go back and start over and try that approach. By my continued play in 1685, I'd made some major blunders, I guess.

Can you list for me the civics you're switching back and forth to, and why? I guess aside from the first two columns (I forget their names) those are the only ones I appreciate.

If you're pop rushing all that military, how are you keeping money coming in, and what are your priorities in research given the relatively free time to expand militarily (by force I mean).

[Velociryx]

Game was delayed on account of Christmas Company, but things are going well so far.

Because this is not a Spiritual Civ, I wanted until I had all the stuff I wanted, and then changed several civics at once. You were running Representation/Free Speech/Slavery as I recall.

I adopted Nationhood, Mercantilism, and Free Religion. Nationhood, I took because where we were in the tech tree, it would let me continue to build infrastructure while not ignoring the army (I could be building observatories everywhere, pop rush them to completion, and then draft 4 muskets per turn). Not to mention the fact that I began building barracks everywhere almost right away (+2 happiness for barracks under this civic), so I could draft from anyplace I wanted and still get good troops.

Organizationally, what I did was, when I started drafting, I'd leave the muskets in the towns, and pull your outdated axe, archer, and spear garrisons out. These formed the backbone of the standing army, such as it was (and this had the effect of ensuring that our towns were garrisoned by the latest and greatest troops we had).

Mercantilism I took because when we first met everybody, they were annoyed with us, and would not open borders. No open borders = no foriegn trade routes anyways, so I played to that. Plus, Merc gave us a free specialist in each city, which played to two different dynamics: 1) you were already running representation (each specialist is more powerful). Eventually, the plan will be to run free market, but we don't have the tech for it yet, and for now, we're getting some mileage out of the synergy between Mercantilism/Representation, so we can let it ride. And 2) MERC as a civic sees its power derived from the number of cities you've got, and my plan called for rapid, rampant expansion. Thus, more cities, more specialists, bigger bonus from representation. It all worked together very nicely.

Free Religion was chosen for the research kick AND for the fact that the main reason the other civs didn't like us was that we had founded our own religion, so we got a big penalty. FR undid that, and opened the borders with a lot of civs, paving the way for FM a bit later (when we get the tech).

In the short run, because we were severely behind in troops, I'm afraid that I pretty much "hollowed out" America. I basically gutted her population (cutting it roughly in half) in exchange for infrastructure and troops.

The implications of that is, in the short term, we lost money and fell a bit further behind in research (while I was doing that, I didn't "go shallow" in the tech tree, but continued to press deep). The advantage is that when the population bounces back, we've got a lot more key infrastructure in place, more quickly than we otherwise would have. Not to mention the fact that we're verging on having an army that can repel an invasion from overseas, which is our first step toward being able to project our power.

Expansion-wise, I expanded even when it was unhealthy to do so. We've got three new cities in the homeland, and are now covering all our island with our cultural borders, and making use of all terrain specials we've got.

We've got four cities on "Yonder Isle" and an FP in the works over there. (I'm sorta eyeing up that one tile island between "Yonder" and France as a possible city site...it'll suck production wise, but I'm currently building the Kremlin, and hammers will lessen in their importance after that's done....in any case, the little isle would make a good staging area for an invasion of France, so I'm considering it.

Managed to get two cities founded on the island south of the big continent, but germany is there with two cities as well, and russia has one, so that didn't work as well as I hoped (and I missed the window for trading astronomy...oh well...it was worth the gamble!)

The net effect of all of this is that we have fallen to last place (temporarily) in GNP, and near-last place in production and food. Now, at first glance you might think that this is awful, but it is not, and here's why--trust me, I've played this way plenty of times....it's just the first step.

* By reducing our population severely, WHILE nearly doubling our number of cities, I set us up for extremely rapid growth over the next 40-50 turns. The other civs have almost no room to expand into, and we acted decisively in that regard, expanding like mad into every decent place we could find. Our workers and troops have been pouring into our new overseas holdings, courtesy of our more robust navy (6 galleons and 2 caravels)--this includes the two galleys you had built that got an upgrade when we got astronomy.

* The other civs have older, more mature cities (with the exception being that Germany built two new, and russia built one new, on the isle south of the big continent), which means that it will take them a VERY long time to grow. The US, on the other hand, is poised to grow like a weed.

* On top of that, we've moved from 8th to 7th in army size, with more growth coming, and we're now 2nd in land area, which means that we've taken the necessary steps to become one of the dominant players on the planet (land = power, and there's no land left, so we're in a good spot).

Future plans:
Continue to draft troops to grow the military, but leave off with the pop rushing. As soon as I can switch civics again, I'll go with Uni Suf (cash buying), and Free Market (since we are now on good terms with most of the world). This will put us in position to rush-buy just about any wonder we want (Kremlin), and rapidly build the remaining infrastructure we'll need, in order to put our conquest plans in high gear.

France continues to lag, technologically, which makes them the best target, and it should not be difficult to take them out entire....

-=Vel=-

[heliodorus04]

Okay, I started over after 3-failed attempts to emulate you, and the fourth time I really "got it."

Disqualifiers go to the fact that I knew what was available on both island-masses, so I didn't use an explorer, and I was ready to go with 3 settlers immediately, and one worker, two defense units, to the island to the east. Had I had to explore, that would have taken more time, but this is a note to myself - when you get galleons, don't be afraid to rush-settle with minimal defense as you explore.

Also, in my 3 failed attempts, I both gave away astronomy, and didn't pursue nationalism/economics aggressively, which were the research points necessary for the civics.

The civics made a HUGE difference. I had no idea how good Nationalism is for drawing up Musketmen and Rifleman.
WOW!
The same can be said with the advantages of Free Religion. While I am 5th in military, almost everyone is Pleased with me, one or two cautions, and only one annoyed (England, because Russia asked me to go to war with her and I thought - heck, England can't get to where I am anyway - and I was right).

I've flooded the islands with old-tech military and a few new-tech ones, because I can't afford to lose them (especially the one that was East of me, the 4-city one; I built Forbidden Palace there, so it's going to have to stay in my empire and be secured if anyone blitzes me). The western island I'm not so sure I could keep. I got two cities there, and France has one that's culture-pushing me too much - and France is who I aim to war with).

I'm not ahead in tech, but I'm only two behind Mansa Musa and usually 1 or 2 with Germany/Russia (but Russia LOVES me, and we HAD a defensive pact till she had to break it to go to war with England).

As I look at where my "quantum leaps" were with regard to my understanding the system - and I hope if others have kept reading this thread this is worth it to them:

The value of Draft under Nationalism
The value of Free Religion when you have to many militarily threatening civs on the map
The importance of researching specifically to the techs you need for the right civics
The importance of the Astronomy expansion possibility (on heavy water maps, which is what I usually play), and not giving away your Galleons!

Fun stuff - I just entered Industrial age, and I'm notaby behind Mansa Munsa, a little behind Catherine, and I leapfrog with France a lot, but I know I'm far superior in the ways that count there.

Thanks Vel - this was quite a good tutorial to the mid game for me. If you're a newbie and looking to learn that era better, take that download, write me a private message or a message here, and I'll tell you how I approached things to turn the corner. not that I'm Vel by any means, but I can tell the difference in my competence in this era now - it required a lot more focus than I was giving it.

[heliodorus04]

The people of the city of Boston are staging protests and burning draft cards in the street, LOL. Guess I better build those sissies a university!

[Velociryx]

Company still here, so I've not had an opportunity to continue, but I definitely agree....civics choices can make or break you. It's not that your civics choices were bad....they just weren't optimal for what you wanted to accomplish (Pacifism, for example....great civic choice, but if you want to aim for conquest, it will bleed your economy dry). Likewise, given the terrain, and the fact that you had not met anyone, IMO, you would have been better off researching Guilds a long time ago, running MERC for the free specialist, and not focused much on forcing specialists, rather than working the land (the net effect of this would have been a healthy research kick from 12 free specialists, and more fully developed cottage tiles, many of which hadn't been worked much when I first opened the save) - long term, this could have put you easily 2-3 techs further ahead.

Free Religion will save your life, diplomatically, if you founded your own religion, or if you're running an "off brand" from most of the rest of the world. Powerful civic choice (and the research kick is nice too!)

Nationalism is among my favorite civics for it's ability to allow me to continue peacetime infrastructure WHILE building troops (essentially, it's a free past to allow a city to build two things a turn, and THAT is cool. Further, the happiness hit is easily offset by the fact that you get +2 happy for a barracks (which should be built everywhere, in anticipation of this civic). GREAT civic, IMO.


Regarding the game:

If you hit france from the 1-tile island staging area, you'll be well positioned to hammer two cities in the opening stages of the war, and they really don't have terribly many cities. I don't have the game pulled up at present, but my basic plan of attack was gonna be to nab the three cities nearest to the 1-tile jumpoff point, burn 1-2 others to the ground to relieve cultural pressure, then make peace to consolidate.

That's the kiss of death, cos in another ten turns, your navy could ferry HUGE amounts of materials across, and the second war with France should be the killing blow, with a period of adjustment to follow as you build a few settlers to culturally lock down France's Island (and use USuf to crash-build cultural improvements).

After that, you'll pull so far ahead of the pack that it won't even be funny! (if the conquest of France doesn't give you a domination victory!)



-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Oh yes! And I'm glad you mentioned the whole thing about directed research (never research something "just because" - be thinking about how you can use whatever abilities the tech in question brings to the table!

And when you get a strategic advantage (Astronomy & Galleons), hold onto it! You can trade it away, sure, and the AI will love you for it, but imagine what you could do if you have, say 20-odd turns as the ONLY person on the planet who can carry settlers to new lands....that kind of advantage wins games! Don't trade it away!

-=Vel=-

[Diadem]

This is a great thread. Helping someone like Velociryx is doing is the best way there is. Far better than posting strategy threads and stuff like that on the forum.

You learn best by analysing your games and learning from your mistakes. That's a truth in any strategy game.

We should make more threads like this. In fact I never understood why there is a Apolyton University if it's not used for this very purpose. Having a seperate forum for posting DARs is fine, but calling it a university is a bit ironic. You learn nothing from DARs. Well, almost nothing anyway.