Can't seem to get ahead

[supperfly]

Ok, I've followed a lot of the strategies and tips that many have thankfully provided in these forums. However, I can never seem to find a clear path to victory at Warlord level (I'm a newbie).

First of all, the German civ is ALWAYS ahead of everyone in the technology race. They have the most advanced units, and LOTS of them. It usually maintains a 600-700 point lead well into the 1900s. I've tried a few of the slingshot tricks to get ahead early, and they usually work. However, as the game goes on, I always get behind. I've built libraries, observatories, and academies. I've also tried the cottage route.

Another thing that bothers me: I pick a weak neighbor to attack in the hopes of gaining more land for a Domination victory. Well, that weak civ just so happens to have a defensive pack with a powerful neighbor. Oops! Now I have units attacking from all directions. I know I should have checked the dipomacy before attacking, but I don't always think about it. After all, I was at war with the same civ a few turns earlier before we agreed to a Peace Treaty.

Any advice? A domination victory would be nice.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

You should be attacking well before defensive pacts come around if you want a domination victory. On warlord you should be able to easily crush your neighbor with axeman or even archers if you focus on building units instead of slingshots or wonders. Rush to bronze, chop and pop army, then rush to cats and you can crush everyone near you on this level without falling far behind.

[Loader2k]

Well, it's hard to give advice when we dont know how you build your empire.
Since you fall behind in tech i would suspect that your city placement is flawed.

-You need enough cities. While it is possible to stay in the tech race (at least) until cavalry with only one city if it's heavily specialized usually you want to grow consistently. 70% science on average should do fine. If you're always on 100% or 90% as a rule of thumb i would say you have too few cities.

-I dont know how much of a factor city upkeep is on this difficulty, but if it is be careful not to place your cities too far away from each other. It wont help you much to found a city that will be just perfect after another 2000 years while it does right know slow down your development considerably.

-It helped me a lot to find out (back with civ1 i think) how production in cities actually works - which terrain yields what, how much food per round do i need to grow a city, what do the different improvement give me, one population can work one tile. Have a look into your cities and see what they actually doing. During the first few turns while you have only 1 city check if the governor does it right.

-Again, i dont know how much of a problem happiness is, but if you have early troubles with it you mustnt forget about Monarchy - Hereditary Rule is very important if you dont have the Pyramids.

-Dont forget Currency and Corporation either, they give you trade routes.

-Lastly, you dont have to build every building you can build - i know its tempting to build everything everywhere, grab every wonder and only build military when you have nothing else to build anymore - but this is not the strongest play.

[billones]

One thing that might be worthwhile... do you have a saved game lying around? From around 100AD or so, maybe?

We could look at how your empire is set up and say what we'd have done differently.

[supperfly]

Thanks for the advice. I usually start out with about 3-4 cities as Peter on a "Continents" map. I guess I could start attacking early, but I wanted to load up on the Cossacks first. Unfortunately, the German civ is usually too far away for me to attack early.

Another thing that bugs me about diplomacy is that when I agree to help out another civ when asked to go to war, that same civ refuses to help me out when I have 2 civs attacking me at once. And that was with the civ not liking the one that was attacking me. Go figure.

[billones]

Originally posted by supperfly
Thanks for the advice. I usually start out with about 3-4 cities as Peter on a "Continents" map. I guess I could start attacking early, but I wanted to load up on the Cossacks first.

Ah, that's one thing. You don't have to have cossacks to attack somebody. If you have Axemen and all he has are Archers, that might be enough. Macemen on Axemen might be enough.

But ultimately, it always comes down to production. If you're producing more food, hammers and gold, you should be OK. If not, you'll have a problem.

[supperfly]

I'll try to submit a saved game in the next couple of days. Thanks.

[Fallenhero]

Read Vel's guides and try to follow the basics. Focus on the start and the early game because this will set you up for the mid game and finnish.

I usually go worker/3x warriors/settler. Get bronze working and start chopping. If you're trees are few but have plenty of food use slavery to push things along.

Get 4 cities going and then see who's either your greatest threat or easiest target. Take 2-3 of their cities then make a sweet peace, stop and digest, build up a little more and see who else is available.

All this is a rough rehashing of previous threads. My personal style almost always includes financial as a trait.
If you have the money you can adjust to what the game throws at you.

[Crossfire]

While getting 4 or so cities before picking a conquest target is fine, ultimately you are going to need 10 or more cities. If you are playing with fewer that is one of your main problems. Also build courthouses in all your cities to cut the maintenance fees in half. Learn to choose appropriate civics and then learn to use mixed army stacks when attacking (including plenty of siege gear for bombarding the other city's defenses away) and causing collateral damage to all the units defending the city. It also helps to have a good idea how to build tile improvements in an optimal fashion.

[Urban Ranger]

Don't mix and match strategies!

Some are horizontal ones, some are vertical ones. Unless you know what you are doing, stick to one. Don't take elements from different ones and mix them up.

For example, when you are attempting the CS Slingshot, you are going vertical, and so you shouldn't expand horizontally while doing it. Yes, that's the cost, so you need to be careful.

For me, aggresive early expansion is still the way to go on the Warlord level. As somebody pointed out, Civ is ultimately about $$$. More cities = more $$$ = more research. Of course, you need to be careful about your first few cities. Place them near choice resources if at all possible. Don't build your first settler (or worker) until your capital is at least 3 in size.

[proviisori]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

(snip)

Don't build your first settler (or worker) until your capital is at least 3 in size.

If you have a good site for the second city. Worker as a first build is very good option. While going for BW. You should ALWAYS chop rush (or in bad forest situation pop rush) a settler so your growth does not stop.

You can even build someting else during the chop and swich the production to settler just before the worker finishes the chop.

[Blackadar1]

How do you pop rush when you only have cities that are 2 or 3 people big?

I'm in the same boat. I've written down, step for step, Vel's slingshot thread. I can't get it to work and I've tried about 15 games. I cannot duplicate the population growth, the city output, etc. I'm always 600-1000 years behind by the time I execute the "slingshot", which at that point just catches me up - it doesn't put me ahead.

For example, I have no idea how he gets this many techs by 1780:

Agril
Mining
Bronze
Myst
Wheel
Priesthood
Writing
Pottery

BEFORE the slingshot at 1780 BC.

Or how he manages to get 2 workers, 1 settler and 3 warriors by 2380.

I've actually printed out what he did, tried it step for step - something simply is missing from his explanation. The only thing I can figure is how many things he "chopped". I've never had a starting city with 5-6 spare trees to chop down in addition to a gold mine.

Even when I do "good" on the intital part (within 600 years or so of Vel), I tend to lose my advantage later in the game. I'm always hurting for cash, so I can't build as many cities as I like.

I'm not doubting Vel's ability to do it - he's a helluva lot better player than I am - but some basic suggestions on where I might be going wrong and some ideas on making gold so I can expand more quickly would help.

[proviisori]

Originally posted by Blackadar1

Even when I do "good" on the intital part (within 600 years or so of Vel), I tend to lose my advantage later in the game. I'm always hurting for cash, so I can't build as many cities as I like.

I'm not doubting Vel's ability to do it - he's a helluva lot better player than I am - but some basic suggestions on where I might be going wrong and some ideas on making gold so I can expand more quickly would help.

Early cottages is a must. You have to work those cottages also in order to make them grow and give you commerce. Put them by the rivers, on floodplains and grasslands. Make a farm chain away from the river if you need more food.

Harbors, markets and above all courthouses can keep your economy in balance.

[Fallenhero]

For a good economy try a leader with financial.

Also, make sure you include guilds (I think) and banking in your tech trees. Each give you an extra trade route per city. Even if you have a small empire a jump of 5-6 per turn isn't bad plus you can now build the markets and banks which will further increase your cash.

[Nacht]

Its Currency and Corperation that give you an extra trade route.