What did I do wrong?

[Uncle_Woody]

In my current game (my first one at the Noble Difficulty level and Marathon speed) I got in research trouble. I only have 5 cities, and before I built the 5th one, my research was breaking even at 70%, so I built my 5th city.

As I played along, all of a sudden the money left over after reseach inexplicably starting dropping little by little. Now it is down to -3 per turn. And this is
after I built libraries in each town.

I tried playing with the specialists and the emphasize research buttons, but nothing seemed to change (see me last post please).

Can anybody tell me why my research plummeted after I built that 5th city (the one on the coast under Moscow). I hope the file upload worked

thanks

[zeace]

Without looking at you particular situation, the usual culprit is a lack of cottages. Adding your 5th city (or in fact any city) increases your total maintenance cost. You need to generate some cash to pay for more expansion.

The libraries will take the 70% of commerce you are spending on research and increase it a bit. But it doesn't affect the 30% you're spending on gold. To increase that you need a marketplace/grocer/bank. Or, just increase the total commerce. Building a cottage will initially give you a little commerce boost, but as the cottage grows, so will you commerce. If you get a cottage down early and work the tile, as you expand your empire, your commerce will be expanding too to pay the upkeep on the new cities.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I only have 5 cities, and before I built the 5th one, my research was breaking even at 70%, so I built my 5th city.

This is not correct. Your research is dependant upon your commerce and is simply a percentage of the total commerce generated. Neither your commerce nor your research should be dropping here unless something else is driving it. Adding another city will only increase the total commerce (all things remaining equal). It is your gold per turn that is dropping due to increased maintenance costs (not lower commerce). Improve some terrain and allow the city to grow (prob add granary first) and it will pay for itself in short time. If you kept the slider at the same position after adding the city, you should notice that your turns to discovery won't change because your research is not actually decreasing. Also, libraries do not add any commerce to your empire, they only act as a multiplier on the beakers already produced by the city. You should look at gold per turn and research as seperate pieces that are inversely related.

-3 gold per turn is nothing to worry about. I often run defecits of -30 or lower or decrease science to 50% while I capture cities. As long as you improve terrain and work cottages you will recover.

[Uncle_Woody]

Thank you SOOO much guys. I really appreciate your flame-free helpful responses.

So it sounds like I need to build more cottages earlier in the game to make more money. I noticed that one of my towns has NO gold generating in squares.

[Arrian]

Yep. Building a library in a town that produces less than 4 beakers/turn (so at 70% science, total raw commerce of 6/turn) does nothing, aside from the 2 culture/turn.

Cottages are key. They kinda suck at first (except for cottages on river tiles using a Financial civ), but they're an investment. You suck it up and work that 2food, 1 commerce tile for a while. Depending on your specific situation, it may pay to concentrate your cottages primarily around a couple of cities, and largely devote those cities to science and/or money buildings. The money buildings (depending on your resources) often double as health & happiness boosters (markets for happy, grocers for health), which is nice.

-Arrian

[zeace]

Originally posted by Uncle_Woody
Thank you SOOO much guys. I really appreciate your flame-free helpful responses.

No problem... We were all NooBs at some point, but some people seem to have forgotten that we're not all born with civ strategy ingrained in our minds

[Nugog]

Originally posted by Arrian
Cottages are key. They kinda suck at first (except for cottages on river tiles using a Financial civ), but they're an investment. -Arrian

Yeah, cottages can seem rather counter-intuative (sp?) at first, but they really pay off in the long term.

As well as building therm, ensure that you go into each city screen and check that those tiles are being worked by the population, as quite often the food heavy squares will be worked by default.

Now I not too sure about this next peice of advice, but while in the city screen, if you click on the small commerce preference button then when the population rises again the city will automatically work the next high commerce tile not currently being worked. I think

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Arrian
Yep. Building a library in a town that produces less than 4 beakers/turn (so at 70% science, total raw commerce of 6/turn) does nothing, aside from the 2 culture/turn.


-Arrian

Well, a library does one other thing. It allows you to build a university and with six you can build Oxford. With as few cities as Uncle_Woody is talking about, you may need to build libraries and universities in places that otherwise wouldn't be worth it.

RJM

[Son of David]

Sometimes all the strategizing in the world won't save you from losing.

If you get lumped in a lousy part of the world, while your neighbours are in the land of milk and honey, you are in all likelihood going to lose.

Winning a game of Civ is usually at least simply 25%-50% based on getting good starting terrain for your first few cities.

[Arrian]

Depending on the level. You can dig yourself out of a hole at lowish levels of play (like Prince, the level I like ). You may have to go TAKE the land of milk and honey from the AI, though. Just tell 'em God promised you the land

-Arrian

[Blake]

Originally posted by Son of David
Sometimes all the strategizing in the world won't save you from losing.

If you get lumped in a lousy part of the world, while your neighbours are in the land of milk and honey, you are in all likelihood going to lose.

Winning a game of Civ is usually at least simply 25%-50% based on getting good starting terrain for your first few cities.

Well this may be true at emperer, but when it coems to Monarch adn easier I've yet to find a map which wasn't dominatable.
Hrm...
except highlands w/ raging barbs. It can give some real doozies.

[Arrian]

I found Highlands/Raging Barbs to actually be easier than standard continents settings (Prince level). Just pick an ORG civ... Japan works rather well

-Arrian

[Blake]

emphasis on can

Highlands doesn't upgrade poor starts. If you start in a patch of ice and tundra, you start in a patch of ice and tundra. And in the ice and tundra there is nearly no food resources, often for like an entire screen. Continents would give your capital like 5 craps to make up for the craptacular terrain, but Highlands doesn't care (actually it does give your capital a couple of extra deer or something but you'll have no decent second city site).

The raging barbs part simply makes it harder to trek to greener pastures.

Oh yeah, and no highlands start is going to be super challenging on Prince. It's on monarch when the barbs really start to bite (no more barb combat bonuses).

Funny thing about highlands is typically about half the starts are crap, so half the AI's will suffer badly. This can make for seriously easy games if you get a good start.