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I kind of play a different game of Civ than the mainstream, so I don't expect too many people to have the same experience.
I play almost exclusively on marathon, and like a large map set for large/small continents on Noble difficulty.
For the last five or so games, I have been playing rather aggressively, pursuing the chariot rush strategy, and I have noticed the same pattern each time.
I'll kill off my closest rival pretty early in the game and add his five or six cities to my empire.
Then, the anti-ICS effect kicks in and squeezes the crap out of me. I will spam cottages, emphasize gold in my cities, turn my research down to zero, move my palace to the center of my empire and sometimes that's still not enough to keep my units from going on strike.
What really frustrates me is that, at this early stage in the game, I haven't teched to the level where I can produce research or gold in my cities and am forced to build things I don't need. You can't build "nothing", so I end up building units I can't afford to keep, and then immediately disbanding them.
Meanwhile, the AI civs are teching and trading merrily away, leaving me in the dust while I go broke at maybe 10% research.
What usually happens is that I will eventually contact civs on other continents, tech-broker my way up, and my economy will stabilize okay.
But the thing is, I always eventually make contact with one civ that has expanded enormously and they run away with the game. Corruption hasn't seemed to have slowed their growth at all, and they are light years ahead of everyone else in tech.
The best that all the other AI civs and myself can do is stay out of the big empire's way, be friendly and hope not to get attacked.
But then the weakest AI's seek protection and volunteer to become vassals, and the big empire grows.
Inevitably, the big empire develops a dislike for this civ and then that civ, and goes to war with them. Maybe they weren't of the right religion; whatever. The wars don't usually last too long before the target capitulates. It's like watching a huge grouper swallowing minnows.
The big fish will usually expect me to help them in their wars too, and I usually find it's in my best interest to curry favor and go along rather than refuse and take the relations hit- after all, I don't want to become the next target.
The only path to victory against the big empire is to stay neutral as possible and pursue the spaceship. Save engineers to rush the space elevator. Usually, though, I will get halfway to completion before they win a domination victory.
It seems that I become a victim of my own success- the chariot rush works great militarily, but by expanding so much so early, the corruption kills me. I am considering the idea of razing the enemy cities next time and just destroying my neighbor, and then settling the unoccupied land as my civ becomes ready to expand.
I play almost exclusively on marathon, and like a large map set for large/small continents on Noble difficulty.
For the last five or so games, I have been playing rather aggressively, pursuing the chariot rush strategy, and I have noticed the same pattern each time.
I'll kill off my closest rival pretty early in the game and add his five or six cities to my empire.
Then, the anti-ICS effect kicks in and squeezes the crap out of me. I will spam cottages, emphasize gold in my cities, turn my research down to zero, move my palace to the center of my empire and sometimes that's still not enough to keep my units from going on strike.
What really frustrates me is that, at this early stage in the game, I haven't teched to the level where I can produce research or gold in my cities and am forced to build things I don't need. You can't build "nothing", so I end up building units I can't afford to keep, and then immediately disbanding them.
Meanwhile, the AI civs are teching and trading merrily away, leaving me in the dust while I go broke at maybe 10% research.
What usually happens is that I will eventually contact civs on other continents, tech-broker my way up, and my economy will stabilize okay.
But the thing is, I always eventually make contact with one civ that has expanded enormously and they run away with the game. Corruption hasn't seemed to have slowed their growth at all, and they are light years ahead of everyone else in tech.
The best that all the other AI civs and myself can do is stay out of the big empire's way, be friendly and hope not to get attacked.
But then the weakest AI's seek protection and volunteer to become vassals, and the big empire grows.
Inevitably, the big empire develops a dislike for this civ and then that civ, and goes to war with them. Maybe they weren't of the right religion; whatever. The wars don't usually last too long before the target capitulates. It's like watching a huge grouper swallowing minnows.
The big fish will usually expect me to help them in their wars too, and I usually find it's in my best interest to curry favor and go along rather than refuse and take the relations hit- after all, I don't want to become the next target.
The only path to victory against the big empire is to stay neutral as possible and pursue the spaceship. Save engineers to rush the space elevator. Usually, though, I will get halfway to completion before they win a domination victory.
It seems that I become a victim of my own success- the chariot rush works great militarily, but by expanding so much so early, the corruption kills me. I am considering the idea of razing the enemy cities next time and just destroying my neighbor, and then settling the unoccupied land as my civ becomes ready to expand.
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