Great, good start. But then ?...

[Vinnnch]

Hello everybody !

My question here is just about my empire management in the "middle" game. Here the situation :
I like to play on epic speed and prince level (still get screwed at monarch...). And I know I can win most of these games when warmongering. Depending upon the Civ I choose, I will attack sooner (romans etc...) or later (russians etc...), but nearly always have a consistent win.
BUT the question is about my empire management itself, if I want to be a builder rather than a neighbours-burner.

In my current game as Gandhi for example, my start was temendous, I have been able to create four religions, and most early wonders (Stonehenge, Pyramids, Oracle, Great Lighthouse, Colossus, Sistine Chapel, and I forget a few ones). so, around 500 AD or so, I had much advance in technology on everyone else, and 1,5 x more points. But from this moment, having tried to keep on building (rather than warmongering) for once, I realized that on about 1700AD, I was only one tech ahead of my neighbours, and not so great in points (although I had by far the biggest land area and cities, and my science rate has NEVER got under 80%).
I agree that, being much stronger than them, most AIs did not want to trade sciences with me (and the only ones sharing my religion were japanese and greeks, awful partners), but I supposed that with such a consistent start, I would roll on everybody else on science.
I have been first to all later techs that award a benefit (free tech, free merchant etc ...), but not consistelntly.

I think the moment I start to lose some ground is the Renaissance. Has any one a few ideas about what to do there, aside from waging wars after wars ?

Best regards,

Vinnnch

[couerdelion]

If you’ve got all those wonders then you should have left your rivals so far behind that they never catch up. Of course, perhaps those wonders were also at the expense of growth and expansion so you are left with a pitiful number of cities with which to fuel your growth.

Given those wonders, I would be running quite a few specialists to fuel scientific development also with Representation and prioritise Alphabet to allow you to trade techs so you let the AI research a little for you. I noticed that you forgot GL which is a “wonder” to have when coupled with Representation.

Another tech to push forward here would be Philosophy since, if you are assigning scientists and are playing relatively peacefully, you’ll probably want to run Pacifism.

With a small empire, Civil Service will also be important, if you’ve got decent commerce there. Add yourself an Academy and you’re city will be your civs powerhouse for another Age or two.

Now if you’ve got all the basic Classical techs, fly as fast as you can manage to Optics and circumnavigate, meet the world, gain trade, trade the odd smaller tech, sell a few for cash and trade resources (those you have in a small empire). Meet them before they meet each other and be the first to circumnavigate. Although it will not be entirely possible, you may want now to “dumb down” your AI rivals by trading with them to stop them trading with each other.

For example, Monty has Civil Service but not Philosophy while Frederick has Philosophy but not Civil Service. You, of course, have both but will gain nothing if the two of them just exchange techs. You could sell to both for a little more cash than you would have. Alternatively, sell to one of them so that the other has no tech to exchange for the one you want. What’s more, if those two are neighbours and Monty has more “power” than Frederick, then sell the tech to Monty since he’ll probably demand it from Frederick anyway.

[Vinnnch]

Thanks couerdelion !

Maybe you will not believe but...
Indeed, I also had the Great Library, and I also was first to circumnavigate (although this one was pretty tight, as I was beginning to "decline"...).
It was REALLY the greatest start I ever had (stone in my second city helped !!), with lots of floodplains and grassland covered with cottages. I had something like 12 cities I think, which is not so enormous, but not bad either.
The only thing that I could not succeed in was creating an efficient "GP Pump", as I tend to build too many cottages, so not enough food for as many specialists as I would have liked. In fact, I had 1 or 2 specialists in every city, since I thought it would maximize the Representation benefits...

Yes, the fact that I still have some "pain" after such a great start is hardly understandable...

[Cort Haus]

Vinnnch, do you have a super science city? Often its the capital under Bureacracy, with an Academy, all science improvements including Oxford, and some settled St Scientists. I usually find that once I've got this set up on Prince, it's possible to leave the AI behind in tech.

[Vinnnch]

Oh yes Cort Haus, sorry, I have not talked about scientists !
In fact I had an academy in my capitol, but not many scientists, since I wanted to build all 4 shrines, and so had only priests as specialists.
When I think of it, maybe I should have made more efforts to expand all 4 religions to all my cities (I only had 2 religions in most cities...)

[Thedrin]

Vinnnch
Stonehenge, Pyramids, Oracle, Great Lighthouse, Colossus, Sistine Chapel

As soon as I read this I thought:

Couerdelion:
perhaps those wonders were also at the expense of growth and expansion

I'd question the following assessment:

Vinnnch:
my start was temendous, I have been able to create four religions, and most early wonders

What do you need all of those wonders and religeous holy cities for? How do they make for a tremendous start, i.e. what strategy were you persuing that would make them useful?

my science rate has NEVER got under 80%

Irrelevant. It's the number of generated beakers that count. If you're making very little commerce running 100% science won't save your rate of research and if you're generating lots of beakers 0% science can be adequate.

There are two things you say that indicate where you began to fall behind:

1)

Vinnnch
I think the moment I start to lose some ground is the Renaissance.

This is probably around the time that the AI start trading technologies between them. If you are not actively trrading technologies then you'll find it hard to keep up with the AI.

Play a game with technology trading switched off just to test if this is where you are losing ground.

2)

Vinnnch
most AIs did not want to trade sciences with me

If you're not spreading your state religion then you're probably better off adopting the religion of one of the AIs - even if you have founded some.

Play a game where you regularly check the foreign advisor relationships screen in the early game. By 1AD trading blocks should have formed. Make sure to ally yourself with one by accepting the deamnds of its members and offering them gifts while shunning the other block. You do not want to get caught between the two blocks.

[Thedrin]

since I wanted to build all 4 shrines

To what end?

You were running 80% science and falling behind in technology. Unless you spent a lot of hammers on missionaries the extra gold from the second, third and fourth shrines would have had little beneficial affect - especially since shrines produce gold which goes straight to the treasury.

Edit: If you got the second shrine up quickly you may well have hampered the ability of your first shrined religion to spread around the world thus reducing your ability to use religion as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

[Arrian]

4 religions is overkill. I've gotten that many, but typically in a sort of "oh, really?" sort of way, not going out of my way to do it. The key is getting one shrine up and maximizing that city for gold (market, grocer, bank, wall street) asap. If you can manage it, making that city a double holy city is great (this can happen if all cities you own already have a religion when you found the second one. Particularly with the later religions, like Taoism or Islam, this can be planned).

I love building wonders, but really: the Sistine is worthless. Why spend the hammers?

80% science means nothing, because it could be 80% of 500 commerce as against someone else's empire running 50% science out of a total of 1000 commerce. 500 beats 400.

-Arrian

[Vinnnch]

Wow grat, thank you for your answer Thedrin !


"What do you need all of those wonders and religeous holy cities for? How do they make for a tremendous start, i.e. what strategy were you persuing that would make them useful?"

> Well, indeed, I think it was just because I thought "The more of them, the better for me". Maybe I have been wrong somewhere, yes...


"perhaps those wonders were also at the expense of growth and expansion"
> Well, not so sure after all. I was on the SW of my continent, with the Greeks on the East , and the Incas on the North. And in the end of the "Land Grab" phase, I was very close to Cuzco (5 or 6 squares north), and very very close to Athens (my borders touched Athens ones). So I suppose I could hardly etend farther without warmongering (which I did not want)

"Make sure to ally yourself with one by accepting the deamnds of its members and offering them gifts while shunning the other block"
> In fact, the two blocks were Capac-Tockugawa-Alexander-Isabelle on one side, Darius-Hatchepsout-Washington on the other one, and Frederick somewhere in between... So, as soon as it started, I had chosen my team, since the first team members nearly never trade with me in any game. Indeed, in most games I love to heavyly tech-trade, but this time I could not much, nobody seemed to really like me. Maybe, wishing the least war possible, I was too kind with my "enemies", and so didn't really please my friends...