I need to improve my strategy, anyone know how?

[Civ-Stephen]

Hey everyone,

I dont understand why my civ strategy never works. I mainly focus on my economy and my starting capital city and make it work as well as possible. I dont usualy start building a settler until the 120th (I cant EVER afford the maintainance without putting research down significantly and I dont want to do that) turn but I instead focus on improveing the land and buildings in my capital city (Also, I ALWAYS have to build stonehenge or ill just feel a bit crap lol ).

My second city I do the same (adding trade networks to the other one and then take another while before I make a new city..

While this is happening it seems that the AI has managed to produce about 7 cities more than me - how on earth does it afford the maintainance costs - so I become a bit paniced and spam about 3 or 4 cities at a time so that I dont loose all the decent spots and then as this is happening one of my neighboring AI tend to declare war on me and I cant realy stand up to them because Ive been focusing in my economy too much and have a lesser military and because ive just build so many cities at a time, I have to put research right down. Meanwhile the AI seems to be galloping ahead in the research race.

This tends to be the trend whenever I play a game of civ but I dont see why it doesnt work. Why cant the AI take things a little slower and focus more on haveing decent cities instead of a load of crappy ones?

Eitherway, can anyone make any suggestions as to how I can improve my strategy because every game I play tends to go like this.

Thanks
Stephen.

[Unimatrix11]

Your question implies that You already know the answers to it (apart from maybe dropping the difficulty a notch): Expand earlier (even if that means to reduce your tech-rating), take a second thought if you really need stonehenge (esp. when you have so few cities anyways), keep in mind that tile-improvements are useless unless there is population to make use of it, and do not neglect your army, for the AI will jump on you if you do (too much) - for that purpose check the powergraph once in a while, if you are last, build military asap or prepare to get stomped... I also suggest turning tech-brockarage off...

[Nugog]

Building that second city should only reduce you tech rate for a short while - just do not build it too far from your capital.

If you have no commerce resources near your capital - try and get them with your second city.

What difficulty are you playing on and which Leader?

Try and play with one leader for a while - work out how to get the best from those traits - then try another combination.

And - yes - turn tech brokering off.

And as alrady mentioned - never ignore your military - you you look weak - the AI will come hunting for you......

[Blake]

Like I said in the other thread on this issue:

More cities means faster research.

It's not quite true, it's more accurate to say that the city count does not greatly effect research rate. It's like 10 cities at 30% research, will research the same rate as 5 cities at 60% research. Having twice as many cities doesn't let you research much faster*, but it DOES give you twice as much production.

In short, expansion speed MUST be your focus, the only thing which should slow expansion is unit STRIKES, any research rate above 0% is okay.

If expanding goes unusually well, you can always research your way out of a hole by running scientists.

The most important thing is to be careful and conservative in your research. Basically you need the following techs: Bronze Working (chop/whip), Pottery (cottages), Writing (libraries, trade), Sailing (lighthouses, trade). If expanding is going well, you should be cautious about pursuing deeper techs. It's almost always possible to get those 4 techs before your economy dies, however easy the expanding is.
Alphabet is also a brilliant tech because it lets you trade, extort and build research.

* Empire Size vs Research speed. Technically, a larger empire does give you a significant boost to research. However most of this boost will be pointy-stick, because you have a larger empire you have a larger army and can use that army to sack cities to fund your research, and to bully techs out of victims. A conquering war machine can research shockingly fast because of all the booty rolling in.
Once you get courthouses and banks around the place, research speed tends to become largely proportional to territory size, twice as large, twice as fast research, four times as large, four times as fast...

[Robert]

It's no problem that your tech-rate drops.
It's supposed to drop, otherwise the game would just have a fixed 100% tech rate.

The tech rate is the worst form of research anyway.
Use city specialists (scientists obviously) for the best tech income.

That's why you need multiple cities anyway.
- you need a great people farm. That's the city with the sea fruit, the banana, the wheat, etc. Assign as many citizen as scientists here, build an academy, and your tech rate drop to 20% will hardly be noticed.
Obviously you build your library and university here. Later the Oxfort University, the labaratory and the observatorium are built here as well asap.
Ideally you get the Great Library here (axe the woods to get it in time!)

- you need a production powerhouse. Ideally this is a city that is surrounded by hills. Both plains and grassland hills. Some food-resources are needed as well to work all these hills. (rice, seafruit, flood-plains, etc.)
Build mines here and focus on building wonders, units, etc. etc.

- You need a commercial powerhouse. Ideally this is the city where you found your first religion. Best cities for this are cities surrounded by grasslands and rivers. Build cottages and work them all. Build a bank, a market, a grocery, and later obviously Wall Street.
You may want to settle great merchants here as well.

- Then you need 5 more cities. (You need 8 courthouses for the Forbidden Palace (reduces city maintenance), you need 8 universities for the Oxfort University, you need 8 banks for Wall Street)

Those cities are a mix. You obviously need 2 more unit-powerhouses to build up your army. You can build a 2nd cottage city, and some cities that are a bit of everything.

Therefor founding your 2nd and 3rd cities is key in this game! These cities must be well placed, since they'll be optimised for special use. Expanding too quickly (ie. expand to 8 cities in no time) will kill you, but not expanding at all will kill you on the long run.

I'm playing at the Emperor level, I always keep place for my 7th and 8th city between my other cities, so that I can be sure that I can found them when I need them.
Mostly when I'm about to discover education (and can start building universities in them)

[boonewaser]

I don't think I've ever had a unit strike. What are are the prerequisites?

[Robert]

Originally posted by boonewaser
I don't think I've ever had a unit strike. What are are the prerequisites?

You have 0 gold
you get a negative gold per turn
you are at 0% tech/espionage/lux rate

ie: you loss more money then you can fund.

[boonewaser]

Ah, that explains why I've never seen it; I usually stop expanding when I have to keep research around 40% and still make money. Didn't previous versions of Civ totally disband units when you were losing money? I seem to recall that happening in Civs 1 and 3 at least, though I might be thinking of something different. I'd think that striking would be a much more reasonable approach, much better than losing the unit completely.

[Robert]

In past civ versions buildings were abandoned when you couldn't keep them up (since buildings cost maintenance costs)

Maybe units would start to disband after all buildings had been disbanded and you still didn't have enough money

[boonewaser]

That would make sense; I was quite incompetent at Civ 1 for age-related reasons, and corruption killed me in Civ 3 (as well as occasional incompetence ).

[LzPrst]

As my brilliant counterparts have said, expand early. often a warrior - worker - settler is a decent first build queue. (local variations may apply). you'll get some gold from early hut popping so the first city will not really cost you much. also, early on specialists are far better than research slider.

it boils down to this. big empire > small empire. this is something that i HATE, but it is a fact of the game. i would possibly suggest that you play with Korea or Vikings. Easy cash and easy defence. Or you could focus on specialists. In which case philosophical leaders are good.

expand to 2-3 cities early on, then get them producing either gold or specialists. then keep expanding continously as you can afford it.

[Kataphraktoi]

If barbs are off choose settler\worker first. Worker if there is a resource+you have the tech or settler otherwise. I ussualy expand until my science is 20% and ASAP. Developing your capitol to its maximum potential is probably the most inefficient method(you can make this work with fish and clams but still). And dont build Stonehenge just because you feel like it-it should be part of your plan.

You should rely mainly on river grassland cottages for commerce and specalists for auxilary.

Why cant the AI take things a little slower and focus more on haveing decent cities instead of a load of crappy ones?

Probably all those ''crappy'' cities are founded near resources and rivers and are actually quite good. You should put a city anywhere there is good food(atleast 1 food bonus) and later cities go anywhere there is grassland river tiles. Wonders, i find, just trip up new players so try a game where you make no wonders. Just build cities and cottages....should be an easy win on noble. Cities sharing tiles(overlap) is good or atleast, not bad It takes a helluva long time to get to max size and you will have turn advantage over perfectionists.

If you feel like being cheep, turn on unrestricted leaders and play Wilhem Van Orange as Sumeria. Teh Ultimate

[jbp26]

you're making bascially all of the common mistakes new players make.

first, you're afraid to drop the science slider to less than 100%, for fear of falling behind in tech. its been stated multiple times, more cities researching at a lower percentage still yields more beakers. it is typical to expand early on until you can only maintain the science slider at 20% (or so), and then build your economy back up from there.

secondly, you're distracted by wonders. you build stonehenge every time, yet only have one or two cities. unless you're charismatic, a monument is useless in your capitol, so essentially you're building it just for the great people points. for the cost in hammers, thats not a very efficient way to generate them. wonders are useful, sure, but rarely more useful then more military or expansion.

third, you're probably not building enough cottages. it may not seem like it gives as much of a benefit as a mine or farm, but cottages are the most essential tile improvement.

the fourth thing to remember is that every city does not need every improvement- this is extremely counter-productive and just slows your expansion. for instance a low commerce, high production city has no need for a library, whereas a high commerce city really doesn't need a barracks at all.

thats all the basic things i can think of. dont worry about specialist economies or fancy wonder tricks until you get the basics down.

[thyrwyn]

The F2 screen is your friend. . .

and, now, in BTS, you can see the total number of beakers/turn without having to go to the F2 screen!

[Civ-Stephen]

Hey,

Started a new game (Prince Difficulty, Huge, Hemispheres, Epic as Churchill) and I made some big changes to my play style and its realy paid off. Im now in 1600AD generating +354p/t Research points at 50% research rate and I have exactly 3786 Gold..

What did I do? - Specialists. I made better use of specialists and had atleast 3 cities within the first 60 turns. Made a huge difference.

Thanks everyone!

Stephen