What are the most significant factors in the long-term growth of a civ

[couerdelion]

I’ve noticed now that my level seems to have dropped off in recent weeks/months and was wondering if other people found that games would be very dependent on the whole range of starting variables. There seems to be something about my play-style that seems to be working against me at the moment and that the AI is getting relatively more competitive.

I’m trying to figure out what it is that I might be doing wrong (or worse) but really have no clue. Up till now, I have tended to find that the general rate of expansion and research is fairly standard. Comparing games, I might be 1 or 2 techs worth of research different from others and production and development would be about the same. Now I have the suspicion that my development speed seems to be quite static. Do other people find that there is any fairly significant variation in their games due to simple random fluctuations or are they, like me, expecting most games to revert to a quite standard pattern of development after initial variations?

I don’t think I’m expanding more rapidly than usual yet I am finding that costs are mounting without any corresponding increase in tech. This leads to the vicious circle of high costs/slow tech/reduced expansion/low happiness etc which all contribute to sin turn hamper the general upwards drift of the civ.

One thing that I think may be causing this variation is that I am now playing full random games and will take whatever start I am given. So starting terrain will be more variable and I am playing with civs who might naturally be weaker or ones that I am less accustomed to. For those of you who play with random civs, do they find this is a significant variable on the long-term rate of growth of the civilisation? Or is terrain a defining factor.

In short, what factors have the biggest impact?

[ghen]

Hmm, I should have picked 'other' as well.. The biggest factor is skill :P.


Any early obstacle can be overcome and evened out over the long game so nothing else really matters for 'long term growth' but I chose capitol goodies and early happiness resource anyway.

[Pandemoniak]

Obviously - all of them, isnt that what a strategy game is about ? Balanced factors for a long term growth of an empire that will stand the test of time ?

[Verrucosus]

I have voted "general terrain", "number of neighbours" and "map type". These seem to be the most difficult ones to work around. The others are also important, but easier to balance.

I share couerdellion's impressions about the game difficulty. I have dropped back to Noble for my first game of Beyond the Sword and I am quite prepared to go back even further if necessary. I blame a lack of practice on my part and real improvements on the part of the AI. Seriously, all of this is good news. If the game turns out to be challenging for average players like me on the most balanced level, that is exactly what I would have hoped for.

On the other hand, I haven't really found a standard pattern of development yet. Being a great friend of random settings myself, each game still feels special to me. Could you describe your "standard pattern of development"? Do you have any idea whether the cost increases could come from (maintenance, inflation)?

[MoonWolf]

When my capital is surrounded by bananas... THEN I'll kick ass!

If start with a gold resource within the fat cross, you can often get a good start tech wise

[Jvstin]

The Capital can be king.

A bad start for a capital can be absolutely killer to establishing all important momentum. If there is no real prospect of a decent resource within the fat cross, it can be difficult to recover from that, especially with Aggressive AI and higher difficulty levels.

I define a bad start as no resources, food or otherwise, within the fat cross of the Civ, on a landlocked starting position.

[couerdelion]

Assume a constant AI decision-making model. Obviously if the AI is better, the game will be harder.

The general level is more of a gut-feel. If I’m at 250 BC and the highest levels of research are Iron Working, Monotheism and Writing, then something tells me that I am being a bit too slow. This is just a little bit short of the key happiness modifier techs (Monarchy, Drama, Calendar) and the lesser ones (Metal Casting, Currency) which all cities to expand out of their early game straitjackets.

Before that, the emphasis on food often leads to the need to bounce up against the happiness ceiling which in turn leads to the need for the whip and worker/settler builds and corresponding increase in the costs

This is one reason why early happiness is so important. The additional production/commerce from just a single +1 happiness can provide a significant turn-advantage over the course of the whole game.

[marvinkosh]

I decided on military resources and happiness resources as being most important. The others are still important, though.

You need military resources in order to survive (either against barbarians or other Civs) and you need happiness resources throughout the game to prevent civil unrest from various factors which are more transient than overcrowding. Angry people mean less of something in a given city.

[Verrucosus]

Just half a day without a reply and the thread is already on page 2. We may need our strategy subforum back.

I see that I am in a clear minority with my picks (general terrain, number of neighbours, map type), so I will try to elaborate.

Originally posted by couerdelion
The general level is more of a gut-feel. If I’m at 250 BC and the highest levels of research are Iron Working, Monotheism and Writing, then something tells me that I am being a bit too slow. This is just a little bit short of the key happiness modifier techs (Monarchy, Drama, Calendar) and the lesser ones (Metal Casting, Currency) which all cities to expand out of their early game straitjackets.

I do not believe that such a technology level is necessarily too low for 250 BC, but when, in addition, I also have no access to any pre-plantation happiness resources, I consider myself in trouble as well. These situations cannot always be avoided and when they occur I have to play catch-up for a very long time. However, very often there are workarounds. The absence of easily accessible happiness resources is something that I will know about very early on (say 2800 BC). When I know that there' will be a happiness problem 2000 years down the road, I can make a plan to either preempt it or compensate for it.

I can think of three ways to preempt a prospective happiness problem:
- Adjust my research sequence to get Monarchy sooner rather than later. Take the shorter route (via Priesthood?) rather than the more expensive one through Monotheism. Sometimes (no offensive war, copper access, no jungle sites), Iron Working can wait.
- Put more emphasis on religion. Spreading the state religion to each city and building a temple raises the happiness cap by 2 points.
- When I am industrious and have stone access, I can try to build the Pyramids and choose Representation. That happiness bonus should cover most of my cities.

Now, sometimes none of these may be available. I might not be able to delay Iron Working because I have no copper, I might fail to get a religion and I might not even start on the Pyramids because I see Roosevelt sitting next door on a working stone quarry. In that case the happiness problem is pretty much inevitable and I would try to compensate for it by planning the most efficient small-town-empire the world has seen:
- If there is enough room available, I can use the surplus food to expand a little bit faster than I normally would, planting additional cottages early enough to pay for maintenance.
- I can emphasis production, shifting people from the fields to the mines sooner and build offensive forces and use them sooner rather than later.
- I can use the surplus food to staff libraries not just in the capital but everywhere.
My impression is that compensation works better when I focus on one of these options rather than doing a little bit of each. Anyway, none of these will solve the happiness problem (unless I use that early attack force to capture someone else's happiness resource), but my empire will be organised in a fashion that makes it less relevant. Eventually I will need additional technology to allow my cities to grown, but because I have more cities (built or taken) or more efficient libraries, I can get there a lot sooner than I could if I had not anticipated the happiness problem.

Of course, all this tweaking and twisting demonstrates that a lack of early happiness resources is a real problem, but - most of the time - it is one that can be overcome in the long run. That's the difference from a start with poor general terrain (too many mountains, jungles), with too many close neighbours or on a harsh map type. The last one is not a handicap because it affects all players, but it is one of the most significant factors in the long-term growth of a civ (development on Ice Age or Highland maps can be really slow).

[Thrak]

Capitalising on a successful early war is the main factor I have identified in my own games - if I cannot goto war early enough (I normally set myself a hard limit of 1000 bc) then I often fall behind.

Conversely when I do succeed in my early war, I tend to overpower the AI (BTS, Prince) with a score twice that of my nearest competitor.

I'm not counting an early city grab as a war however, the difference between getting an early 1-2 pop city and grabbing a 4 & 2 pop city (with worked tiles!) is quite impressive!

So I suppose if I was going to pick anything it would be strategic military resources. If oyu didn't have horses/copper/iron anywhere, you're stuffed (unless you have a relevant UU).

(It is true that with an uber capital start, I can compete with the AI anyway - but that is so situational I don't even think about it when strategising. Wars in my book are not situational at all - if my nearest neighbour is a strong defensive AI, I want him dead before he fortifies and I need cats, and if he is for example Rome, I want him dead before he can build Prats. And if he is weak... I might go for someone else and mop him up later. Also the catapult nerf, I assume, was to stop mass rushes once you hit construction. But if affects normal warring players too. This makes an early war even more important in my eyes, as I am going to have to invest more industry for my catapult-era war, delaying it).

Summary; BTS changes enough about civ 4 (no quick CS slingshot, many GP tech nerfs, improved AI building & barbs, combined with pop chop changes) that builders are always going to be at a disadvantage until some new strats are made. Warmongering is the trump card of the player vs ai - milk it and win.

phew, lunchtime essay :|

[couerdelion]

Verrucosus,

You mention one alternative to early happiness resources, religion. This can definitely improve growth prospects and also provide a little room in which to use the whip. So the choice of civ then comes into play since those starting with Mysticism have a good chance of acquiring an early +1 happiness. If you then take a civ like Brennus (starts with Mysticism and is Charismatic) you’ve got all you need for happiness without the resources so may not worry too much about it. In general, though, civs don’t give you free or easy happiness so the early resources are, in my games, important.

For those civs, the “religious” solution to unhappiness is also going to be a little harder. Not having easy access to a religion, it will have to bee-line fairly early for either Confucianism or Taoism – Christianity is an option but takes you down the “wrong” part of the tech tree. However, even here Code of Laws can either take a long time or sends you once again down the religious branch of techs. As an alternative to this route, the longer route (Maths -> Currency -> COL) is more expensive that (Alphabet -> Drama) which solves happiness forever and also opens up Philosophy to a GS Lightbulb after Mathematics is research. But all this means is that we can solve the happiness problem more quickly by taking a better tech path so the religion is not needed exclusively to solve unhappiness.

I can’t quite understand why others don’t select this option but one reason might be that if the difficulty level does not start biting that quickly. If you have an ungarrisoned capital with +1 whip unhappiness with a happiness cap at size 2 then you start to worry about unhappiness.

Thrak,

Those war deadlines (1000 BC) look a little steep. If every game relies on an early rush then you are gambling on the existence of either copper or horses and on having a near neighbour. Iron is a lot more expensive and since this adds little else to my civ, is generally going to be behind some useful worker techs. I could not imagine building an army from iron before 1000 BC.

For the aggressive or charismatic civs, and early rush is certainly desirable but quite often things are not set up to enable this tactic. I personally find that the “right conditions” don’t often materialise (20-30% of the time) so even if I had one of those civs that like early fighting, I would probably want to spend a little more time on getting my house in order before knocking two shades of blue out of a neighbour.

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by couerdelion
For those civs, the “religious” solution to unhappiness is also going to be a little harder. Not having easy access to a religion, it will have to bee-line fairly early for either Confucianism or Taoism – Christianity is an option but takes you down the “wrong” part of the tech tree. However, even here Code of Laws can either take a long time or sends you once again down the religious branch of techs. As an alternative to this route, the longer route (Maths -> Currency -> COL) is more expensive that (Alphabet -> Drama) which solves happiness forever and also opens up Philosophy to a GS Lightbulb after Mathematics is research. But all this means is that we can solve the happiness problem more quickly by taking a better tech path so the religion is not needed exclusively to solve unhappiness.

One thing in favor of going for COL, too, besides getting a religion is that it opens up Caste System, which can be very useful if you play a heavy GPP sort of game.

[Thrak]

Well regarding my points, thats your issue right there.

By the time your 'house is in order' the AI's house is also in order (and on higher difficulty, normally moreso).

The rush I mentioned above was with iron - I moved my force just after the 1000 BC deadline I set myself. I believe the war lasted under 15 turns, and I had his capital in half that. the science boost from a second large city is huge, and the AI loves to do the improvements so you get maximum benefit pretty quick.

There is always a trade off and yeah, its nice to have everything sorted before you focus on troop production. the AI does that, and I count on that - and exploit it.

If you don't have a close neighbour and have room to expand that would be my focus, other than that its fight fight fight.

By the way I'm using Pericles (Cre/Phi) at the moment. I'm a fan of selective pre-math chopping and slavery where viable. Edit: I also leverage Great Prophets to make up for the tech defecit.

I should add 1000BC IS a challenge, its how I challenge myself. When I see the years ticking down I know where I should be and it really helps to focus my efforts.

One of my worst faults when playing civ is sitting back and babysitting my cities building improvements as I go, with no real goal - 'coasting' I suppose. This is my solution to that.

[jkp1187]

Originally posted by Thrak
Well regarding my points, thats your issue right there.

By the time your 'house is in order' the AI's house is also in order (and on higher difficulty, normally moreso).

The rush I mentioned above was with iron - I moved my force just after the 1000 BC deadline I set myself. I believe the war lasted under 15 turns, and I had his capital in half that. the science boost from a second large city is huge, and the AI loves to do the improvements so you get maximum benefit pretty quick.

There is always a trade off and yeah, its nice to have everything sorted before you focus on troop production. the AI does that, and I count on that - and exploit it.

If you don't have a close neighbour and have room to expand that would be my focus, other than that its fight fight fight.

By the way I'm using Pericles (Cre/Phi) at the moment. I'm a fan of selective pre-math chopping and slavery where viable. Edit: I also leverage Great Prophets to make up for the tech defecit.

I should add 1000BC IS a challenge, its how I challenge myself. When I see the years ticking down I know where I should be and it really helps to focus my efforts.

One of my worst faults when playing civ is sitting back and babysitting my cities building improvements as I go, with no real goal - 'coasting' I suppose. This is my solution to that.

Thrak,

That's a very good idea. I am playing Pericles for the first time in my current game, and found myself sucked into the trap of "oh, look at all these neat buildings I can build really quickly" and actually didn't fight any war until the 1700s. Despite having Sitting Bull as a neighbor, and despite having decided that I'd eventually have to take out Sitting Bull as soon as I realized that we shared a continent. I will give your 1000BC idea a try next game.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by jkp1187


Thrak,

That's a very good idea. I am playing Pericles for the first time in my current game, and found myself sucked into the trap of "oh, look at all these neat buildings I can build really quickly" and actually didn't fight any war until the 1700s. Despite having Sitting Bull as a neighbor, and despite having decided that I'd eventually have to take out Sitting Bull as soon as I realized that we shared a continent. I will give your 1000BC idea a try next game.

while i agree that that early war is critical, don't wage it against sitting bull ifyou have any other options. protective + barracks + totem poles archers are impossible to dislodge.