Death on Prince

[DrFaustus]

Hello -
I've been reading Vel's guide, and many of the threads on this site.
My playing level for CivIV has gone up quite a bit as a result of everyone's input. Thanks!

I'm up to Prince level, where I'm doing fine for about 1/2 the game. I usually run the Pyramid Gambit, and build up a nice little 5 or 6 city empire by 1 AD.

Somewhere in the middle, however, I start getting my a** handed to me. It's always in the same way. Some distant civilization suddenly starts pulling ahead in the stats like a runaway horse. Soon, they're like 1000 points ahead of me. Eventually, they trade their fantastic technology to my enemies in the neighborhood, and that's the end of that.

Clearly, my tech research is falling behind, although I'm using specialists as much as possible, and building all the research facilities I can. It all just seems to come to late.

Here's a file that shows what's going on at 840 AD: http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?....Civ4SavedGame

So I would like some mid-game pointers, if anybody has a few to share. Thanks again.

[CerberusIV]

OK, I had a look at your game. Where to begin?

I normally play on Prince but at epic speed which gives a little more time to do things. You might try that.

City placement - Kufah could have gone 1 tile NE which would have put it on a tundra tile and left a grassland for a cottage. Basra could have gone 1 tile NW on the coastal hill - better defence and commerce.

Workers - you have copper! Road it and build axemen not horse archers. You can never have too many roads in your own territory.

Explore! Early on get a couple of warriors out and make contact with other civs and some idea of the size and shape of the continent you are on. There are two civs you haven't met yet. Research Optics and send out a couple of caravels as they are probably on another continent. That might give opportunities for tech trading.

Buildings. Concentrate on essential buildings first. Baghdad only has a barracks and is set to waste the next 24 turns building a horse archer. It needs some culture to expand its borders first. Better to have one or two of your older, larger cities do most of the military whilst newer cities get granaries, forges, courthouses, etc. up.

Speaking of buildings - you are running organised religion but only 4 of 7 cities are christian. Get 3 missionaries built and the remaining cities converted ASAP.

Specialists. You are running caste system and have scientists in several cities. Put them to work on tiles and concentrate your GP efforts in your capital where the GP points from wonders help. Just pump your GP's here. Generate and whip excess population in other cities to get those essential buildings up, rather than specialists - it will pay off in the longer term.

Research. You are researching engineering - not a terribly important tech. Feudalism, Civil Service or Optics all offer greater benefits (you can actually get Feudalism in trade from Hatshepsut anyway - do so, even though it costs you two cheaper techs. Trade now before an AI beats you to it).

Why are you building Chitzen Itza? This isn't particularly useful. Mecca can be pumping missionaries or military units at this stage.

Basically your civ doesn't have the foundations to run a specialist driven economy. Better to learn how to build a general purpose economy and add specialists later. Maximise use of your resources. Get a balanced military up - a couple of garrison units per city and a mobile force to help out where threatened. Focus your research - research deep for advanced techs and trade one of yours for 3 or 4 from the AI's.

[DrFaustus]

Ah, the cold, antiseptic sting of instruction!

After having been overrun a few times, maybe I'm focusing too much on building up an army.
I tried out your suggestions, and stayed neck and neck with the leading civ up through the 1700s. So, clearly something is working.

However, then it all goes south again.

Thank you very much, and I'll keep working on it.

[Diadem]

CerberusIV gives solid advice. Listen to him

But I disagree with him on the issue of specialists. They can be quite useful if you have represenation. So I wouldn't say it's that bad to run them, right now.

But you don't need caste system. Instead run slavery. Those 2 science specialists you want, you can run them with a library.

Slavery is very important. Switch to it as soon as it's available. And use the whip a lot. Basicly you want to whip something every 10 turns, if possible. Later in the game, when your cities are bigger, and buildings become much more expensive, whipping becomes less useful. But early one, whip all that infrastructure in place asap.

This is related to having scientists of course. If you whip a lot your cities are smaller, and the few citizens you have, you want them to use food-rich tiles. So you will only have scientist in your few best cities. Which is okay.

Another thing is, you need to specialize your cities a bit more.

[CerberusIV]

I must admit I'm not a big fan of specialists and struggle to use them well - a weakness in my play (and why monarch is a bit hard for me).

DrFaustus - don't worry, this is a complex game and it takes time to learn to do everything. If you find your games are running into trouble at a later stage then post another save.

[DrFaustus]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
If you find your games are running into trouble at a later stage then post another save.

So, taking your advice and avoiding specialists, I've been doing better. Also, in the meantime, I got Warlords (I'm on a Mac), so this is a Warlords game. Mine default to a CivWarlordsSave file type, which wasn't uploadable, so I changed the extension to ".sav". You may have to change it back to get it to work:

It's 1866, and I'm playing Louis. I've been doing pretty good up until now (always number one until around this time). Several things dogpile me in the next 60 years or so. Shaka, with either Caesar or Tokugawa, will team up and attack me. I go into full military production and fend them off for a while, but eventually they start grinding size 19 cities into dust. Furthermore, they've got coal and oil, which I don't, so when it's time for the mechanized vehicles, I'm completely lost.

I recognize that it may be too late in the game to fix mistakes at this point. But it's interesting, nonetheless (at least to me).

Thanks again for any input.

M-AD-1866.sav

[CerberusIV]

I'm sorry but this is probably going to seem to be nothing but criticism again. I guess that is partly because I would play things rather differently. Please take this in a constructive spirit as I am trying to suggest alternatives you might try.

One major issue here is that you don't have enough cities to dominate any AI's. On a standard map I like to have 10-12 cities if possible, even if it means an early war for territory (that may be more difficult on normal speed as opportunities are more fleeting).

Not having coal or oil sucks. I took a peek in the worldbuilder and you will get 3 aluminium and one uranium so all is not entirely lost. You could chance dropping a settler directly on the oil on the Zulu island to your west just for that vital resource. Speaking of resources you can trade gold to Julius and Shaka for fish and clam respectively. That will improve relations with both of them as well as solving the unhealthiness in your cities.

Your diplomacy seems to have gone awry. You have managed to trade with just about everyone's worst enemy. However it probably isn't too late to build relations with Julius and Shaka, keep Ragner onside and drop the others - you should be able to keep your military up enough to deter them from attacking. The key is to have Julius/Shaka more inclined to attack someone else on your continent rather than you.

You can also help relations by switching to Free Religion. This will boost your science as well as removing the wrong religion penalties to diplomacy. Theocracy isn't really doing anything for you. The +2XP is only worthwhile if coupled with a barracks for a total of +5XP (giving new units 2 promotions) and you don't have barracks in most cities. Free speech isn't terribly good either. The culture is nice given the proximity of one of Ragnar's cities but Bureacracy would be better. If you get universities built in Rheims and Marseilles you can then build the Oxford national wonder in Paris to help your science (Bureacracy with Oxford and Wall Street as the 2 national wonders in the capital is a huge plus).

Rheims is building walls. Why? Your enemies have gunpowder units so walls are now obsolete for all practical purposes.

You can trade techs. Hang on to Biology and Steam but you can trade the other 2 to Ragnar for Constitution. I know you are running Representation with the Pyramids but you will need to research Democracy soon before the AI's start to adopt Emancipation and give you unhappy faces in your cities. You could also sell Shaka Education before he gets it somewhere else. This will help relations and give some gold for upgrading your military.

You are researching Railroad. This is pretty useless without coal to build railroads with. Assembly line is more important to you as infantry show up on the power rating as better than machine gunners and factories will boost your hammer output even without coal. You will get Corporation on the way for extra trade routes and Wall Street too.

Cities that are building wealth/culture/research should be producing riflemen to replace older units. You need to keep your military up to date as a deterrent and that means replacing units you can't afford to upgrade.

That's all I would say about this game (and it's probably more than enough ). I haven't actually tried to play it so my suggestions may not make a difference. The spaceship may not be out of the question but I would find it quite difficult to win from your position.

I feel a bit bad about offering nothing but criticism, albeit well meant criticism. I'd like to try an experiment if you are willing. Start a new game and post the save. Play 50 turns and post another save and comments on what you have done/are trying to do and why. I will do the same. Then play another 50 turns and post. I'm not being patronising here, I would expect to get something out of that myself as it would make me think much more carefully about what I do if I played a comparison game.

If you don't fancy that I'd quite like to try the 4000BC autosave from your french game if it is still in your autosaves folder.

[DrFaustus]

Please don't apologize! I asked for help, and I'm happy to get it. You are taking the time, and I really appreciate it. My "cold antiseptic sting" comment was a riff on Monty Python, and meant to be funny, nothing else. It's always hard to hear about one's elementary blunders, but that is exactly why I posted the game. I need to see what I'm doing wrong, and sugar coating it isn't going to help.

BTW, last night I played this game to the end, and came within about 3 turns of winning a time victory. So I'm already getting much better because of this thread. Thanks!

I played a couple other variations of the game before I got there, though. There was one where I attempted to grab the oil plot that's southwest of Lyons. Because it's at the juncture of three civs, this means war with everybody. The best I could do is destroy the oil well there, but not use it.

Regarding your comments:
Somewhere in the last variation, I realized that the main reason I wasn't winning was because of size. I had made Toku my vassal, and that was helping, but I needed a few more cities.

The next thing I need to really learn are the fine points of the civics settings. You're asking me why I'm running such and such in your posts, and when I think about it, the answer is "I don't know, I'm just trying to get a 'higher' one." Not good. So it's time to look into those.

Also, as you mention, I haven't got a handle on the diplomacy mechanics. If I'm not mistaken here, it seems you have to pretty much choose who's going to be your friend and who isn't and stick with that forever.

It would be fun to do the 50-turns thing. This is a busy weekend, but I'm sure I'll find the time!

[rah]

The first few times I played, I did the same thing with civics. You'd get a new one and it would ask you to revolt and you assume it's new so must be better

Fortunately I learned quickly. I have no excess food but it's time to switch to caste system for extra specialists. Or I just finished building 50 calvary to go after my neighber, yep it's time for pacism.
I can only laugh at my ignorance.

And you'll get used to which AI's everyone else is going to end up hating so unless you fear them, there's no reason to be nice to them. And those that it doesn't matter how nice you are to them, they will come after you eventually, so why give them anything.

[dacole]

If we can all be on the same map I would love to do this as well. I have a couple evaluate my performance threads that have been most helpful..

[DrFaustus]

Originally posted by dacole
If we can all be on the same map I would love to do this as well. I have a couple evaluate my performance threads that have been most helpful..

Try starting with this one. It's fun: Louis-4000 bc

[Diadem]

Interesting save

Cerberus already gave a lot of good advice. But let me give me own. Some of it may already have been said by Cerberus, but I'm just gonna say what comes to my mind.

First of all, you need to check your diplomacy. You can trade a lot of techs and resources. You want to know who your foes are, and who your friends are. You want to make friend with Caesar and Ragnar, trade resources and techs with them. You can get Tokugawa to stop trading with Shaka for nationalism. That seems a good deal. It'll piss Shaka off, but he's already pissed off. I also traded some worldmaps. Never hurts.

Techwise you need assembly line for infantry. You don't have coal or oil, so you want resource-independent troops asap. After that go for artillery for much the same reason.

Meanwhile build up your military, and prepare for war. Build drydocks, stables and barrackes in your cities. You should havce done that a long time ago I guess

None of your cities should be building science or wealth atm. Get them to produce military, and go to war. You want to kill Memhed, and take over his oil and coal

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Diadem
Build drydocks, stables and barrackes in your cities.

Stables while going for Infantry

Seems really a bit too late

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Nacht
Stables while going for Infantry
Seems really a bit too late

But just think of the potential of having one or two cavalry stacked with infantry, nailing the occasional weaker enemy unit, pillaging as you leave (or enter) a tile, preparing for the time when oil and upgrade to gunships are available.

Not that I would build LOTS of stables, but one or two at least might be appropriate. Of course DrFaustus, stables & barracks must be paired in the same city for maximum effectiveness.

An occasional sentry promotion for extended visibility is valuable.

Note: I have not downloaded the saves.

[CerberusIV]

OK I made a start on the Louis 4000 BC save.

Not a bad start. Coastal but not too many water tiles. Piggies, elephants, a river to help commerce and some hills that might have metals to mine.

Founded Paris on the starting position and started to build warriors until the city reaches size 3 and can build a worker.

Research - Animal husbandry first to get more food from the pigs (helps settler and worker production and excess pop to whip). Then Bronze Working, then Pottery.

Sent first 2 warriors exploring (got 3 goody huts in total), met Alex, Augustus, Ragnar and Wang Kon. Note to self - keep a close eye on the neighbours. One warrior got past Seoul before being eaten by a bear, the other continues to explore along the N coast. The other 2 civs are probably on another continent.

Horses near Paris - nice. No copper - bugger! Founded Orleans on the coast SW of Paris. Researched Archery (Hunting will let me build a camp on one of the elephants).

Future plans. No-one too near. I'd like to get CoL as the other early religions have all gone but need Iron Working first to try and grab the metal if there is any so IW then to CoL followed by Sailing and Alphabet to trade techs. Will try to get 4-6 cities up ASAP.