Build Ratio

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Vampgelus
You guys always talk about having a few core citys ruling the economy, and, in simple terms, all the others just building units. What does "a few" mean ? For national wonders you need already 8 of them, even more with modded map-scripts.

Which national wonders are you building? I generally have 4 cities with National wonders, maybe 5 if I need the Maoi statues somewhere. A national epic city, a wall street city, an ironworks city, and a heroic epic city. Even with hermitage (which will probably go in one of the other cities anyway) and Oxford, that's only 6, not 8...

And the "no forge in commercial city's" thing... i don't understand this at all, since theese citys will need many buildings and does not have so many hammers. Logically i'd say that theese are the citys benefiting the most of a forge.

I agree with this. The extra happy from the forge is also often relevant. My trick with forges is figure out how long the game is going to last (my games usually end late, so I generally get lots of turns out of my buildings) and calculate whether the extra shields from the forge will be more than the cost of building the forge. Since forges affect chops and whips as well as base production, very, very few cities fail to get more hammers out of the forge than it costs.

I'm always having all the available buildings in all my citys wiht only a few exeptions, mainly because i may need a marketplace for increasing happycap more then anything else (running at >80% science, the gold bonus is ridiculous). Playing like this is the only way for me to stay in tech lead wich IS necessary since the AI does in deed always have much more units as i have, so that i need to have better ones instead of having as much.

Building every building in every city, or nearly so, is bad. Production heavy cities just won't get enough out of the commerce buildings. And happy caps generally aren't a valid reason to build markets and such. Either run Hereditary Rule and build units which will give you the same happy boost and a power boost, or run slavery and slave the excess population into units. Or run caste and turn that extra food into specialists. Until about the industrial era, I generally (though there are exceptions) don't want my cities any higher than 10 population at the most, the tile yields before biology/state property/ lumbermills / electricity / railroad / universal suffrage aren't good enough to work the tiles.

Also on the happy cap issue, if you build more units and take more territory, then you will have more resources that will increase your happy cap without a market or whatever. And you will deny your opponents those resources, and give them fewer cities to build units from, and yourself more cities to build units from.

As far as science rate goes, as has been said, it is fairly irrelevant. In the game I am currently playing, I was running a 10% science rate for about a hundred turns (and losing 1 gold a turn!) and have never had my science rate higher than 50%, and am still the tech leader. (This is at Noble, higher difficulties won't let this happen most likely.) Love your scientist specialists, just 3 or 4 in the classical era can increase your tech by 50 turns.

Of course, in the end i get such a tech lead that the game becomes boring by playing like this, but i think it is the fastest way to win. (btw, tech lead is better then IND trait IMHO, since you are the only one having the tech when starting a wonder, the early ones being the only exeption to that rule).

But if you have Industrious, you spend fewer turns building the wonder, which means you have more turns to build units. Also, if you are building the right wonders, the extra turns you get with those wonders active, and the extra GPP you get, should allow you to get a tech lead.

[Vampgelus]

Originally posted by Seedle


Which national wonders are you building?

I talked about needing 8 universitys for oxford, etc...

The IND thing is just in fact just what you sayd, you can afford to get the techs later because you will spend less time building the wonders and may build more units in the mean time, but i still prefer to get the techs earlyer even if building the wonder actually takes longer, because when you have 2 teching traits AND the wonders, the result is even better, and you won't need so many units, since you will have more advanced ones as the ennemy does.

What you said about forges makes me believe you are not playing marathon. I do, so i don't even think about the forges not being profitable

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Vampgelus


I talked about needing 8 universitys for oxford, etc...

Ahh, that makes sense. Yeah, I've had to build banks in cities that they didn't really belong in to get Wall Street. Though, if you take enough territory early, you will have enough cities that it won't hurt to bad to have a couple building banks that aren't to useful. It's all about having as much territory as possible. Still, a valid point that I missed the first time.[/QUOTE]

What you said about forges makes me believe you are not playing marathon. I do, so i don't even think about the forges not being profitable

No, I play marathon. As I said, very, very rare that they aren't profitable.

[Hauptman]

Are some of you people going for 1 for 1 parity on unit numbers?

Wow. I mean, just wow.

A 100 unit SoD can be beaten using 20 units and tactics. Proper placement of units, and sacraficial defensive delay fights can whiddle down the AI's SoD so that my main force ( a quarter the size) can usually mop them up. With minimal casualties.

[Krill]

A 100 unit SoD can be beaten using 20 units and tactics. Proper placement of units, and sacraficial defensive delay fights can whiddle down the AI's SoD so that my main force ( a quarter the size) can usually mop them up. With minimal casualties.

Hmm. 5:1 in units, I doubt that...even against an AI. Proper use of collateral type units and the failure of the AI to use flanking HA to kill them, or fast movers (cut off the enemy stack in the forward city and take every city behind it with 50 fastmovers) and that 100 units stack should be enough to take the majority of your empire.

[Hauptman]

I had to do it against the Khmer in my emporer Huyana game (no aar for that one, but I have discussed it.)

The ai is moronic about tactics... and very predictable. I simply placed defensive units in its path (usually worth 3 for 1 , possibly 4 to 1 or more if lucky WITH terain add ons, I just happen to have a forested hill, left for this purpose) Wich ate up a large number of cats and some of his elephants. I used my roads to stay out of range as he moved into my culture, Hit him with a few cats as he got to my city walls, a couple of macemen and knights took some of his out, and he attacked my hardened defenses the next turn (he had no cats left!~) and lost HUGE. those that were damaged didnt attack (wich was many) and I did the same again, although only a couple of cats of my own, that happened to survive the first attack. 3rd turn he backed off, and I hit him again. killing off all but a few units.

5 turns later one of his cities was mine and he accepted capitulation.

Now granted his stack wasnt 100 units. But easily 4 times what I had. (edit add on, I should say 'in the area' as the fact I am not counting my cities 1 unit defense everywhere else, or the defensive units on my other border, wich was much smaller)

Now that screenshot floating around here of the 100+ SoD rome threw at me, again, I took it out with far fewer units even AFTER i made some huge mistakes. But that was late game where I had a huge tech advantage... as in tanks, mobile arty, helos etc. vs his rifles and cannons on monarch.

[Krill]

What you are saying is that the civ controlling a 100 units stack using crap tactics can lose to a good player using good tactics.

What I am saying is that if the civ control the 100 strong stack used good tactics they would win.

The only point of contention is that I thought the AI wasn't so stupid as to lose a 5:1 majority in units. I could be wrong there, because I didn't program the AI, and I've never given the AI 5:1 odds against a city.