About strike and map generator

[thazer]

Hi I have a couple of questions

1. At what point does your civ start to Strike? Is it when you have too many cities very early or is it because some are too far from the capitol like 10+ tiles? Like what is the algorithm if there is an exact one you know of.

2. I'm going to have a showdown against a friend on sunday and we play on size Tiny continents with 4 AI's adding 6 civs total. What we want is a map with just TWO continents and 2 AI's on each continent so it is as even as it can get. So how do we accomplish this without having to play loads of rounds realize that one of us only has to play vs 1 AI on his continent and start over until it is as we want?

Thanks!

[Solver]

Strikes are when you have 0 money, and still negative income. Instead of going into the negative numbers, your civ goes on strike.

[thazer]

Ok, because in one game it was really weird, all units except 1 defender in each city (about 6 cities) got disbanded, all cities were road connected and STILL I was in the minuses.

[Solver]

Yep, has nothing to do with cities or roads, just the amount of hold you have.

[Ari]

Too many cities too early in the game can do horrible things to your income if you don't increase your finances enough. Especially before currency, if you don't have enough cottages or costal tiles being used, you can have amazingly little commerce coming in. The increase in maintenence is exponential early on too, so adding even one city too many can be murderous (since instead of 5 cities costing 2 gold, you might have 6 costing 4 gold). Add to that the fact that your free military units are (I think) related to your population and you get a critical period towards the beginning of the game when overexpansion can be really deadly.

[Tattila the Hun]

Same with conquest and keeping all of the cities.

(What maintenance? Nothing to maintain! A conquered nation, they'll have to earn anything they wish me to maintain! )

Switching all of you cities to "emphasise commerce" often helps, but then you can't really build anything at reasonable amount of time.