What to do with health resources and no happiness resources

[Blake]

What is your full list of techs?

Am I correct in thinking you don't have writing?

With writing you can use a good food tile to turn 2 citizens into scientists, which not only brings in more science than anything else, it also prevents the city from building useless crap. The Great Scientist, I recommend settling, ditto for a Great merchant, both will have the same effect. When your economy is so slow the settling GP has a long long long time to pay off and the income can be put towards any tech. I'd also settle the prophet unless he can light bulb a religion.

Try to get trade connections with your neighbors ASAP and chances are some happy resources will show up for trade sooner or later, if you get a forge happy resource you'll be sorted. This is by far my most usual solution to a bad happy start.

In the longer term you either want to trade for your happy resources or invade for it. I tend to think that HRule warrior spam is only really viable for Financial (except in selective cites for non-fin), a strategy of using the culture slider tends to work better for creative because you get the buildings cheap, but even then I find drama to be a lackluster solution.

[wodan11]

One of the first things I do is scout the area, and decide if I need to prioritize happiness or health benefits. e.g., if you really want the Hanging Gardens, you could get it. Just get there halfway early, and set aside a halfway decent production city to starting on the aqueduct right away.

Same thing for happiness. You could get Notre Dame if you really think you need it. Or, you could prioritize Theatres, Colosseums. Or, go the multiple religion route (and the obvious next step: Sankore/Spiral).

that's one thing I like about this game. Multiple paths. The only really key thing is taking 5 minutes around 2000 BC and figuring out your long term plans.

Wodan

[Dominae]

It sounds to me like your problem is not happiness, it's that your economy is about to shut down (building Wonders for Gold, long research times, etc.).

You could grab Monarchy to raise your happy cap thus allowing you to work more Cottages, that's quite a long-term proposition. In the meantime you'll still be suffering all the same problems.

Are all your cities working food resources and Mines, rather than Cottages? This may seem more efficient in general but in this particular instance you need the Cottages more. Repeated slaving is not answer to your low happiness cap, all you're doing is generating more Hammers which you don't need.

Writing and Alphabet are your next techs for sure. Writing because you'll be able to pull a bunch of laborers off the Mines and start doing some research with Scientists, Alphabet because you'll be able to Build Research (and maybe get a lucky get tech trade in or two).

With more beakers coming you'll be in a better position to select where you want your happiness to come from. Drama is not always the best option, but in this case it is because you'll be very close to it already (as Aeson said). The fact that you didn't even consider it is an opportunity to try something new - I guarantee you'll be surprised!

Why exactly are you not going the warmongering route? After Colossus and Oracle you could just build Axemen instead of Wonders and conquer more land, specifically to secure more happiness resources. Great Prophets from your Wonders would serve to fund this campaign.

wodan's advice is very good: especially on the higher difficulties you need to plan ahead and determine where you'll get your Health and Happiness from. It's a bad sign when your city growth stops for extended periods of time in the early-game.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
I tend to think that HRule warrior spam is only really viable for Financial (except in selective cites for non-fin), a strategy of using the culture slider tends to work better for creative because you get the buildings cheap, but even then I find drama to be a lackluster solution.

I agree on the HR spam.

Drama really shines while Specialists are a significant Commerce source for your empire though, which from the sound of it should be for quite a while in his game. Beakers from Scientists and Gold from Merchants are Beakers or Gold regardless of what the slider is set to.

Theaters are dirt cheap even for non-CRE. A Temple costs 90p, and gives 1 Happy. A Theater costs 50p, and gives up to 10 Happy from the slider, 1 from Dyes. For a high Food economy with any significant use of Specialists, even in a very short term use till trading options become available, it's a no-brainer IMO. It's the closest thing to Civ III's Lux slider, and can even outperform it.

[Blake]

The slider isn't baad especially for specialist economy but it's not that quick to research (in part this is because it wont be discounted - the AI's hate drama).

I find that usually trading for happy resources gets me in a tolerably good position. This should be possible on a terra map.

I would use drama in a situation of being isolated with no happiness, but otherwise I'd just keep an eye open for happy trades. You do have to form the trade links quickly and get them quickly before the AI trades away the surplus to others.

[Aeson]

You don't want to research things that are discounted against the AI though. If it's discounted it means you can't trade it for as much. Alphabet early should be a given on any real difficultly level, so you're right there at Drama. Ignoring Alphabet as the requirement for tech trading, Drama is probably the very best tech in the game to research for trading purposes. As you say, the AI avoids it, so you're almost sure to get it first and get full value in trading. It will even allow you to trade Alphabet around sooner, getting more value for it. Drama is a tech that adds virtually nothing to the AI, so trading it to them doesn't hurt. Having it first means you're almost sure to get the Artist from Music, since you can hold it for a while even if you aren't ready to go to Music yet. The Artist from Music at least pays off the research into Drama, and usually with plenty of extra value (Theology for instance). Music itself is another very good tech to trade to the AI, since it's main value at that stage of the game is the Artist which they won't get, and later on when it does matter (Military Tradition) they'd have gotten it long ago anyways. Drama opens up Philosophy, another really good tech to trade to the AI since they don't use Pacifism well at all, and you'll already have Taoism.

Drama, and that basic area on the tech tree, is where you want to be for tech trading purposes. (An all out blitz on Liberalism aside.) Another trick with Drama and a moderate to full-bore SE is that post-Currency you can sell off your happiness resources to the AI, instead of buying or trading for them. Or at least have more to trade for what you need (Health). (It's stuff like that that no one ever seems to factor into the balance between SE and CE.)

Trading for resources you need is always good of course, but is reliant on the AI and map generator. I'm interested in what you'd want to research in the meantime though, while waiting for Happiness? Math, Construction, and Currency are the options that make sense generally speaking, and they're through Alphabet too. If Drama lets your pop boom in the meantime, you can have those 3 faster with Drama first most likely, especially if you can trade Drama for Math anyways.

I'd take the up-front Happiness from Drama, boom some pop, then lower the slider if/when the other avenues of Happiness were available and deemed more efficient.

[couerdelion]

Well things have moved on a little since then and I’m round about 300 BC with a wonder-driven economy starting to click into gear. A lot can be said for a little bit of luck that I had in generating a GE who promptly went to St Petersburg to build Pyramids – placing this in Moscow would have added to the growing pool of GPP but would have diluted the Prophet points which I wanted for Theology.

So this gave the bonus science but, more importantly at this stage, increased my city size limit to 5/6

As it was I finished Monotheism just after the GE so that route was, at least up till now, a slightly costly diversion apart from Polytheism which opened up some marble wonders. The net result is that I have Stonehenge, Oracle, Colossus and Temple of Artemis in Moscow and Pyramids, Parthenon (currently worth 11 GPP/turn) in St Petersburg. Even the generation of a Great Merchant in 450 BC was no real disaster since he can settle for 1f/6g/3b.

Tech research at the time (1050 BC) were Fishing, Bronze, Wheel, Mysticism, Meditation, Priesthood, Pottery, Metal Casting (in that order). Since then it has been Polytheism, Monotheism, Animals, Writing, Sailing and I’m now onto Alphabet (which Gandhi already has). With a little luck, Moscow will be able to add the Great Lighthouse and Library (both of them extremely valuable given the existing batch of wonders I have acquired). Just looking at GPP, the total wonder driven GPP in Moscow will then be 31.5 per turn (or 55 with National Epic)

Militarily, the original problem I had was a large expanse of cold terrain to “unfog”. So there were many warriors used simply to stop barbarians from emerging. After I had the copper linked, the threat has gone but with little to do with production, I have managed to acquire a middling army of axemen and a couple of spears which is now looking decidedly obsolete for anything but defense and, since it only has to defend three cities, is somewhat of an overkill for my modest needs. It’s still the smallest army about though and includes three warriors whose likely use will be as medics.

Somewhat worryingly, Gandhi seems to have a tidy tech advantage at the moment (Monarchy, Alphabet, Archery and Iron Working to my Metal Casting and Sailing), so there is a small risk that he beats me to Great Library.

I do now figure out the Drama thing. It seems to make sense although I have always felt that the cultural slider was a bit of a waste of commerce. Since I am somewhat penned in at the moment, I might try that diversion although Iron, Mathematics, and Construction look a more sensible choice for breaking out and acquiring myself some resources.

[Blake]

Re: Aeson

Compass is a better trade tech than Drama. Drama is just a little too cheap to be tradable for the good techs (Currency, Code of Laws, Construction etc), you'll be able to trade it for Mathematics or Iron Working but for most things you'll need to throw in another tech - those things you can trade it for tend to be things which will mess excessively with WFYABTA.

Compass OTOH is valuable enough to be traded for all the good stuff, it's just as neglected by the AI. Whether it'll be more or less useful is quite situational (clearly, depends a lot on neighbors - not that you'll be researching trade fodder without neighbors).

On a Terra map with it's ultra close civ spacing (compared with other maps) you can usually get a lot of potential trade partners very quickly, the odds are high you'll be able to trade for at least a couple of happy resources, and there's nothing wrong with a happy cap of 5.

My priority techs (over Drama) are Mathematics, Iron Working (although only if needed to clear resources), Construction, Currency, Calendar, Metal Casting and Compass. Not all of these are always going to make sense and it does depend largely on the available happiness sources, for instance I'm probably not going to get Metal Casting unless I have shinies or are Ind AND want Colossus. Currency makes lots of sense with an existing happiness resource to double but otherwise it's marginal. Construction always gives Colosseums and they are worth it if your happy need is dire but it's main use is sacking cities.
Most the time I'll trade for Monarchy and Code of Laws but I may self-research Monarchy or oracle CoL (I'd definitely strongly consider oracle CoL if I'm happy starved).

Now one advantage of Drama is you can then follow up by lightbulbing Philosophy, which gets you Taoism. I have followed that path in a few games and it does sometimes make sense. Philosophy is a good trade tech, but the problem is again cost - it's not quite valuable enough to be tradable for Civil Service or other lower-middle techs, in terms of cost it's way overkill for trading for Currency but not so much so that you can pick up two decent techs with it.

Part of the question here is circumstances. Construction and Currency are useful with neighbors (razing cities to fund research, and trade to power the economy), when you don't have neighbors these techs are not nearly so useful.

If you have no neighbors at all then Drama+Philo looks pretty attractive.

[couerdelion]

Isn’t Metal Casting also very good for tech trading? I think my plan is to go Alphabet/Literature and then Mathematics to open up the Calendar, Construction and Currency trading options. Philosophy, OTOH, is something that is looking very tempting, when I can use it to get another 20+ GPP in the capital through Pacifism (who cares if that costs me 20 gpt more for the army)

I suppose one thing tempting about Compass is the harbour though I wonder if this will do much to the G Lighthouse/Temple of Artemis-fuelled trade income in the capital. Civil Service looks a little more tempting given the small empire I currently have.

[Blake]

ANYTHING is good tech trading if you oracle it (especially religious techs which upon losing the goodie become less attractive, thus giving them excellent shelf value)

Drama and Compass are examples of techs which you can often out-research emperor AI's to and get a monopoly or near-monopoly.

[Aeson]

The thing about Compass is you have to get to it, and it's rather mutually exclusive with going for Alphabet early on. Also, it doesn't really act as a gateway to further trading techs, whereas if you go through Drama first, it's almost guaranteed Music and Philosophy first if you want them too. That, along with the Artist, gives you a nice progression of available beakers to trade around, without speeding the AI to anything they'll find useful.

As for the trade value, it's easy enough to pair up techs usually, or use Gold to even things out. By the time you're up there by Drama+, Currency will be showing up shortly. Music makes good trading then. Even without it though, having Philo to trade for the "lesser" techs around Currency isn't a bad thing at all, as you can suck up the AI's Gold and get in a position for Civil Service, and then with most anything else to add to Phil you can get Civil Service too. (Even Drama can work in some cases, since CoL opens up Philo too.)

Generally speaking though, I'd go through CoL to Philo more often. CoL can be grabbed first even on Deity, and then the whole Drama bit can still be there after. It's rare that Drama is really that important for Happiness, but in basically any case where the Happiness situation was bad enough that HR would be a consideration to address it, I'd go Drama first.

[Blake]

The entire drama area of the tree is terminally bad for maiming neighbors. While compass is a little out of the way, it only requires Iron Working (and sailing) meaning it can be slipped in easily along with the tech to Guilds.

Beyond Compass is eventually Optics, which can be lightbulbed with a GS and can lead to great new trade potential on the right map types.

The reason that the Compass/Optics/Astronomy line is terminally unattractive to the AI is that it's devoid of wonders and GP's. The AI nearly always pursues wonders and GP's. Drama is largely ignored because Literature has the wonders on it, meaning the AI's target Literature, that then lets them get Music (the AI tends to look two techs deep, basically meaning they'll click on a tech up to two deep and then pursue the shortest path - Literature is also the shortest path to Music so there's really no route by which the AI will go through Drama).
Music and Philosophy are attractive to the AI's because they have freebies (GP and Religion respectively) and wonders, the AI's will sooner or later "diceroll" a decision to pursue these techs.
You can get them (the freebies) if your fast, but you do need to be fast - often really fast. Meaning, neglecting economy and military.

Compass on the other hand can be left for quite a while, the AI's are simply not interested in it, thus it's a good tech for the human with a struggling economy. It can be traded for good techs with cash on the good side of the table.

By the way Compass is more exploiting the AI's lack of understanding of how bad a tech compass is... they know when choosing research that it's a bad tech, but when it comes to tech trading they use the simpler beaker evaluation. This is in contrast with say Alphabet which is also a neglected tech but gives the owner significant advantages.

In Better AI the AI puts a greater weight on researching Alphabet and Drama (if pursuing CV) but the compass is still valued low.... which makes compass the defacto tech-whoring tech of choice in Better AI. It works equally well with the normal AI, but other choices might be more viable.

[Aeson]

Never tried Better AI, so... you'd obviously know more about that. Standard AI though...

Math, Construction, Currency, Metal Casting, Machinery... they're risks to research directly. You will get them of course, but you may very well only get them for your efforts. Whereas the Alpha line gets you a "safe" 3-5 monopoly techs to trade, with no gaps in research. In general, it'll mean you can have every tech you want up to CS as fast as the AI can get it.

So no... The Alpha line first isn't a bad military option. It can even be the most efficient military option, given that you can get all the military techs with trading faster than you can research them all yourself. And you get any necessary economic techs at the same time.

The Compass line is going to have lulls in it. You can't go to Optics directly after Compass, at least not early enough to really matter. And Astronomy is a long ways off after that too. They make good spot research, and of course are extremely important on water maps (I'd hold off on trading them then though), but don't have the continuity needed to make up a solid tech path designed to get you into, and keep you in a trading loop.

[Kuciwalker]

By the way Compass is more exploiting the AI's lack of understanding of how bad a tech compass is... they know when choosing research that it's a bad tech, but when it comes to tech trading they use the simpler beaker evaluation. This is in contrast with say Alphabet which is also a neglected tech but gives the owner significant advantages.

In Better AI the AI puts a greater weight on researching Alphabet and Drama (if pursuing CV) but the compass is still valued low.... which makes compass the defacto tech-whoring tech of choice in Better AI. It works equally well with the normal AI, but other choices might be more viable.

Wouldn't that be a fairly simple fix in Better AI, to have AI's value techs for trade using the same formula they do for research?

[couerdelion]

It has occurred to me that one of the difficulties with the Terra map is that there is are limited resources if many of them are located on the other continent.

Current tally of wonders now is 7 in the capital and 3 in St Petersburg. Of course, the constrained development could obviously not continue to long so I finally decided to use my army to start taking out Isabella.

But after Monty then decided to declare war I had a few problems. I was still able to take Madrid and hold onto three Spanish cities from the Aztec while vassalisation of Isabelle was enough to ensure her demise at the hands of the Aztecs – the final destruction of Salamanca was celebrated by the citizens of Madrid, Barcelona and Cordoba. The Aztecs took one of my Spanish cities without a fight and a rushed army of Mace/Crossbow/Cats was needed to see off their core invasion force without any pillaging.

Once it was time for me to turn my attention to the Aztecs, the Mongols joined in but they really didn’t have the heart for much of a fight so I ended up taking the Aztec capital and one of the Aztec coastal cities – the latter shortly falling to the Indians through cultural pressures.

So the net result is that I have just seven cities and am on the verge of liberalisation. The Tenochtitlan has a 14 city shrine while Barcelona is the holy city of Judaism. I’ve also picked up two Military Academies (Madrid and Tenochtitlan) which is about the nicest things that the Aztecs and Spanish could have left me.

Meanwhile, my adoption of Christianity and Pacifism allows me to churn out specialists of all shapes and sizes – Moscow gets 84 GPP/turn without specialists, or 105 GPP/turn with two scientists. Even though the wonders will soon be over, I will still get a 7 GPP/turn in the capital from each one which remains a healthy return on investment. But it will be sad to see the benefits slowly reduced. I now need to decide whether I now concentrate on the new world for domination of just use the military production/tech advantage to start throwing my weight around at home.

I’m still not sure that I’ve quite figured out what to do with no happiness resources are this level. Without Mysticism or Industrious trait, there are few obvious ways out without going quite deep into the tech tree.