BTS advice

[CerberusIV]

Corporations - worthwhile IMHO.

7 to choose from but 2 or 3 is the practical limit due to some competing with others and having to build execs to spread them.

Mining Inc is awesome for the extra hammers but the most expensive to operate - basically all the corporations cost an initial amount to spread and then cost several gold per turn in the city after that. The cost can be more or less than the 12gpt you get back if the corporation HQ is in your Wall Street city so some corps make money for your empire and some have a net cost.

I usually try for either Mining Inc or Creative Constructions for the hammers and either Sid's Sushi or Cereals for the extra food. When you have a marginal tundra/desert city or a newly captured city those extra hammers, food and culture really get it up and running.

Spreading corps to the AI's isn't easy as many of them will run mercantilism or state property so blocking your corp. It's worth spreading if you can, particularly to the weaker AI's as they don't use the benefits as well as you can and it can help keep weaker AI's in the game. Every AI city you spread a corp into costs you a one time gold but gets you 12 gpt back. The more expensive corps can help to overload an AI's economy too.

One way the UN is actually useful is to get Environmentalism adopted - thus opening all the AI's you have open borders with to your corporations.

Health is critical in BtS. Build health improvements where possible (Refrigeration is more important now for the supermarkets) and consider using environmentalism - yes it costs a trade route compared to free market but gets more health itself plus an extra 2 health from public transportation. If you have the food those extra citizens can make it well worthwhile.

That's probably enough to be getting on with.

[Cytral]

or....you can use your spies and revolt his city every turn.

[Unimatrix11]

In general i also think that winning on higher difficulties just involve a little more work. Not that i intent to be insulting, but my bro is about your level i´d say and what he does, he does right as far as i can tell. The problem is: He does too little (himself). He does no city-management leaving everything related to the city-screen to the A.I. and he also automates his workers. So basically he is too "lazy" for noble of above. Which is of course fine, if he prefers to play it this way...

[Yosho]

It's also worth noting that if you spread a corp to someone, he might spread it farther...but that's not always a good thing. I spread mining inc. to a few minor border cities of a major compeditor of mine, figuring the extra hammers wouldn't help him much in those cities; he then spread it to like 5 other cities and declared war against me, heh. Not sure if he just wanted the extra hammers for the war, or if he thought he could take the mining inc corperate headquarters himself.

[Jaybe]

I prefer to spread corporations to other MINOR civs (no I don't mean barbarians ), usually to minor cities that won't be able to build a new exec. quickly. An occasional one to a vassal sometimes (may not want to bankrupt them).

[CerberusIV]

Depends on the corp - you definitely don't want to give Mining Inc to any civ that is near the top of the pile. Giving it to a minor civ that is someone else's vassal is pretty safe though - if you put it in all of their handful of cities they have no incentive to build execs nd spread it to their master. Likewise anyone who looks like they are going for a cultural win should not be given any of the corps that generate culture.

On governors - it was OK up to Warlords to use governors. They were only mildly retarded but at least if you put the city on culture or research they switched the specialists around as well. Now they just seem to set most of the specialists on spies and generally do extremely stupid things with the other citizens. Definitely for the AI only.

[Dis]

went back to warlord level, crushed everything.

I had this problem too when warlords first came out. One level was too easy, and the other was too hard. I soon learned how to crush everything on noble level. But so far that hasn't worked out.

My warlord game was as the dutch. Granted I did skew things my way a bit . archipelago with dikes worked out well, as I knew they would. So I may try a noble level archipelago with the dutch. Just to get my foot in the door (hopefully).

And I think I will have to micromanage more. But I hate that. I micromanage workers of course, that's mainly because I hate the look of roads everywhere, but I have certain ways I like to do things. But I hate micromanaging which squares workers work, and specialists.

[Krill]

Next time you play on a continents/pangaea map, try playing as eygypt and rushing some AI with WCs.

[Dis]

oh question about a rule change. Mali declared war on me. I quickly took one of their city with tanks and cruise missiles, and noticed I was able to talk to them, and ended the war after like 2 turns. Did they remove restrictions of talking to ai's after war starts?

Kind of funny as we were on good terms and had a defensive pact at one point. I spread civ jewelers to all their cities. Not sure if I should have, but my money kept going up and up, so I had a hard time stopping .

[Krill]

Why stop at one city? If you can keep on taking cities do so; doesn;t matter if you can't keep them, burn them to the ground and then extort techand gold from them

[Dis]

The city was on my island (actually I was on his island as he was there first ). It was late at night, I just wanted to finish the space race and win the game. So I had no desire for a drawn out war.

[Krill]

Fair enough.

[Velociryx]

In my experience, BTS *can* be easier than Warlords, provided you don't allow yourself to get distracted by Espionage.

In the games I've played thus far, I've ignored espionage (never raised it above 0%), focused on the economy, blown past my rivals in research, and then, with the hopped up economy, gotten the drop on the next door neighbors.

IMO, the AI likes to dicker around with their sliders too much, and they wind up doing none of the above particularly well.

In the Warlords universe, I often found myself hard pressed to keep up with the expansion of the AI's, but in BTS, I'm often in the position of out-expanding everybody around me (which magnifies the power of my beloved Creative trait). That, coupled with the economic focus makes it pretty smooth sailing.

One thing I'd recommend, Dis, is don't bother building any wonders till at least the late middle ages. Conquer whatever early wonders you want instead (possible exception being Oracle...just too good to pass on).

Keep expanding till you control the largest land area by a comfy margin, and then focus on economy (usually easiest to "find" a religion...just adopt whatever your neighbors are doing and have a big love-in with everyone around you until you get yourself sorted out....then kill the founder of said religion for the holy city, and you can coast to whatever victory you like

-=Vel=-

[CerberusIV]

BtS does require a bit more micromanagement than Warlords or vanilla - but not too much.

What I do is manage all my workers until the basic improvements are in place, then set them to automatically improve so that they build the lumbermills with Replaceable Parts (take them off this if you get Scientific Method as they switch to forest preserves), then switch to automatically connect resources so they railroad everything.

It used to be possible to leave the governors in charge of your cities throughout but not any longer. Once you get out of slavery and start stopping city growth to avoid unhappy/unhealthy it all goes wrong. Basically the governors don't know what to do with spy specialists so you get too many of them and not enough of other specialists so once you stop using slavery turn the governors off. The easiest way is to decide what size city you have enough happy and health for and to stop growth in each city as it reaches this size. Then set the citizens and specialists as you want them. I check every 10 turns that all is well and that is usually sufficient.

I am comfortable with BtS at Noble but find the step up to Prince (where I was with Warlords) is a challenge at the moment. I would do better if I put more time into each turn but I really only play fairly casually and I'm happy at that.

[Saygame]

Originally posted by Velociryx
In my experience, BTS *can* be easier than Warlords, provided you don't allow yourself to get distracted by Espionage.

In the games I've played thus far, I've ignored espionage (never raised it above 0%), focused on the economy, blown past my rivals in research, and then, with the hopped up economy, gotten the drop on the next door neighbors.

IMO, the AI likes to dicker around with their sliders too much, and they wind up doing none of the above particularly well.

In the Warlords universe, I often found myself hard pressed to keep up with the expansion of the AI's, but in BTS, I'm often in the position of out-expanding everybody around me (which magnifies the power of my beloved Creative trait). That, coupled with the economic focus makes it pretty smooth sailing.

One thing I'd recommend, Dis, is don't bother building any wonders till at least the late middle ages. Conquer whatever early wonders you want instead (possible exception being Oracle...just too good to pass on).

Keep expanding till you control the largest land area by a comfy margin, and then focus on economy (usually easiest to "find" a religion...just adopt whatever your neighbors are doing and have a big love-in with everyone around you until you get yourself sorted out....then kill the founder of said religion for the holy city, and you can coast to whatever victory you like

-=Vel=-

Amen Vel.....BTS seems much easier than Warlords.....