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[BobTheBackpack]

I pwned Chieftain with Aggressive AI-got an Augustus Caesar ranking on it. But when I go to play on the Warlord difficulty-I find it to be to big of a challenge... could anyone give me some tips?

[Kloreep]

A big one is to make sure you improve the tiles your citizens are working. Very early in the game you often can't help working unimproved tiles, but you should eventually get enough workers that all your people are working improved tiles. If you don't do this, you miss out on a lot of potential production.

It's kinda hard to give wholly general advice though... I'd recommend posting a save (or two) from the middle of a warlord game of yours, so we can see what you're doing.

[BobTheBackpack]

I do that Kloreep...

[snoopy369]

Bob, read strategy articles on the web - there are a ton of them out there.

General suggestions:

1. You should build a worker in your first three units. First unit, if you have a bonus production square to allow it to produce reasonably fast, or you are Expansive (in Warlords) and get a bonus to producing them.

2. Use Slavery. Get bronze working early, and go to slavery. Once your capital (and other cities) get to their 'happy cap' (ie, 8 happy <--> 8 unhappy faces) begin to 'slave' production, to get use out of those useless additional population. Generally doing it once every ten turns is adequate (keeps you at only 1 unhappy face). Work out your builds so you're only losing one pop each time (one pop = 30 hammers, unless you have a bonus to production).

3. Build cottages on most of your 2 or 3 food non-bonus squares. IE, grasslands and flood plains. Gone are the days of "Irrigate or Mine"; cottages change everything, and if you use them well you will win easily on warlord level. I only irrigate (ever) if i'm making a "Great Person" city, who needs the food to support great people generators (specialists), or to support no-food mines for hammer production; or temporarily to grow a city quicker, then changing to a cottage later on when it's grown.

4. Catapults. Build them, love them. Most of your stacks should be 50%+ catapults in the early game (and replace catapult with "current siege weapon" later on, though the percentages decrease to maybe 20-30% by artillery).

5. Watch the Demographics pages (F9). You should, at Warlord level, be #1 in GNP, at all times pretty much. You should also be fairly high in Production. Watch the Power graph, and make sure you stay fairly high

Ultimately, these graphs tell you what you're not doing right. If you're high on the power graph and high on the production graph, but low on the GNP graph, then you're not generating enough trade (tech/gold). Go for more cottages. If you're high on GNP but low on power, you're probably going to be beat by the AI pretty quickly. The AI watches the power graph, and will attack you if it sees you're weak compared to it. Basically, any graph you're low on is something you need to work on raising, other than Food; and food can indicate you're not building enough cities, though there are better ways to see that (land area on fhe F8 screen, for example).

[BobTheBackpack]

What would be a good victory to go for? Space race?

[Solver]

I'll move this to the Strategy forum so it gets more views .

In essence, Warlord is an "easy" difficulty - which means that, if you're having trouble with it, you're likely doing something wrong with one of the more basic elements of the game. To make an example, effective use of Slavery is not a requirement to win on Warlord.

It's hard to guess what exactly you're doing wrong unless you post a save game for us to analyze, but here may be some of the common problems / solutions:

1. Getting a Worker too late. The specifics will depend on the game, but for me, a Worker is usually the second unit I build, sometimes third. If you're delaying a Worker too much, you're losing ground in the early game.

2. Expanding too fast. If you go broke in the early game with huge treasury problems, you've probably built too many cities too early. Watch your maintenance and income. Of course, this may not be your problem at all.

3. Not building Cottages. Learn to love cottages - you'll want most of your flat tiles (plains/grassland) to be covered with Cottages, over other terrain improvements.

4. This is a very important one... have short-term goals. Your ability to formulate a short-term goal will help you a lot. The goals can be something like "establish a productive coastal city so I can build the Colossus", or "expand to the north to limit options of the Egyptians and grab a source of Gold", etc. It's important.

I hope we can help you here

[Nugog]

When I moved up the levels I found it difficult to begin with too.

The advice from Snoopy and Solver above is very good advice.

Also - if you are used to building two scouts early (as I was) - reconsider - build two more workers (IMO) - build a good strong production base with your first two or three cities and you are away!

And as Kloreep said - post some saves of games you are playing, here in this thread.

I'm sure you will get lots of advice.

Keep at it - it does require approaching the early game in a different way - but it does pay off.

[BobTheBackpack]

Sorry non working link.

[Nugog]

The link does not work.

Just uise the attachment bit at the bottom of the Post Reply page - image attached.

[BobTheBackpack]

Here is the file

[Nugog]

[Solver]

Okay, I'm looking at the save, and some stuff I'm noticing immediately.

1. You're not doing well at hooking up resources. You have Pigs and Cows not hooked up in your territory, whereas Rome is suffering from unhealthiness. Hooking up resources should be one of your top priorities. Taking the second source of Gems, for example, could wait - the second source provides no extra happiness.

2. You're running at 90% research. In this case, it should be 100%. At 100%, you'd be at -3 gold per turn, but you have 98 gold, so you can run with that deficit for 30 turns. Unless you have a specific goal you need the money for, run at 100%, you can afford it. Negative gold per turn is fine, that's what your reserves are for.

3. Courthouses. You're building Courthouses in your two non-capital cities right now, which is a total waste. Maintenance in these cities is only 2 gold per turn currently. Courthouses won't be useful - they're useful when you have many cities, and for cities far away from your capital. In Antium, I'd build a Granary to speed up the growth, taking into account its high food source (Rice). Cumae could also use a Granary - those are essential buildings, in fact. Plus you're Expansive, they're cheap for you.

4. Construction at Rome - why are you building a Temple specifically? Rome isn't unhappy, and won't be when it grows a pop point. You don't need that Temple yet. I'd build a Settler instead. There are unclaimed tiles to the North, including a Banana and a Horse resource. You can also afford a new city buget-wise - in fact, I'd say you need one, you don't have enough now with only three. It seems like the Egyptians will build a city there in a couple of turns, though, that's your loss.

5. Your units don't seem to have a purpose. You have built 4 Praetorians. Why? If you're not planning to attack, you could have spent the time building something for your economy. If you want to attack, you should be attacking or moving into position - you can take Philadelphia easily. An attack on Madrid would also be tempting, but you don't have Construction for Catapults.

6. You've focused too much on religious techs. You got Divine Right and are researching Philosophy, but don't even have Writing, which leads to crucial techs. Founding a religion is good, but founding more religions isn't that great - you shouldn't be researching expensive, time-consuming techs like Philosophy or Divine Right when you can get Writing instead.

7. I wouldn't run Christianity here. You have 2 cities with it, and you have 2 with Buddhism. You founded Christianity, but you don't have the Shrine yet. Russia and Spain are Buddhist, no one else is Christian. By running Buddhism you would gain two allies, but as it stands, Spain hates you. If you researched Writing and then Alphabet instead, you would benefit a lot from having trading partners, I think.

I hope these hints are of some help, feel free to ask any questions .

[BobTheBackpack]

Is the problem correctable?

[Solver]

What do you mean by that?

[Solver]

Okay, here's an example of how I might play this out. In this save, you'll see that I grabbed Alphabet and switched to Buddhism for tech trading, which landed me Mathematics and Calendar, so I'll have Sugar hooked up soon. I also put the army to use by attacking America - I now have Philadelphia along with its Ivory, a resource of Wine comfortably in my territory, and Washington is already willing to give up Horseback Riding for peace.

The Egyptians grabbed that city site to the North, it was too hard to prevent from the save, but it's not a huge problem. You can capture the city later if you want it. Oh, I also grabbed Taoism either way.