Military build up vs. completionisim

[wodan11]

There are some other strategies as well. A merchant GP farm, for one. Quite easy to do and very strong. Not only do you get tons of gold straight from the merchants, but you crank out great merchants which can be used to pop cash for that huge army you want to have. Or, you could settle them to increase your base income plus allow running more normal merchants (+1 merchant per two settled great merchants).

Wodan

[Arrian]

You do have to give up on the compulsion to build all the wonders. It's just not going to happen. The End.

Pick the ones you really like, and have the best opportunity to build (if you have stone near your start, that's a pretty good reason to consider stone-based wonders. Ditto w/Marble. Speaking of which, I've had a couple of truely insane wonder games as the Inca where I had both marble and stone early. And I *still* didn't build them all, on Prince level).

Forget 100% science once you have more than 1 city.

There are two basic ways of arranging your economy in the game: Cottage Economy and Specialist Economy. I've seen others explain the SE quite well, but I suck at it and so I won't bother to try. I'm a CE guy. It really helps to be playing a FIN leader and having some river tiles. If you find yourself in an area low on rivers and you have stone nearby, you may want to drop CE like a bad habit and learn to love the Pyramids (key for SE). But I digress.

You need several cities that will be largely commerce-devoted. These will be cities with decent food resources and lots of flat land. A hilly site w/good food is a military pump site (you will need at least one). Anyway, only cities that have a decent amount of commerce should get libraries, universities, observatories and banks. Non-commerce cities might get markets and grocers eventually due to happy/health reasons, but hold off on that if you can. Likewise, a city that is mostly working cottages does not have time for barracks and troop building (if and when it does have time, you're doing pretty well).

Generally speaking you want to hold off on building things you don't need or cannot yet derive much benifit from. Example: Your military pump city is at size 6 and will be unhappy at size 8. It's not growing a lightning speed. Choice: temple or another axeman? The right answer, in my experience, is almost always another axeman, right up until the point where the city is about to grow into unhappiness. The one exception is when you already have a huge army and are preparing to invade a neighbor... then order up the temple to help with the coming war weariness.

Open borders means trade and trade means money. Do it. Plus, you can scout out the other civ's land, and send in missionaries. Likewise, smart resource trading can give you a real boost. When I say smart, I mean giving the AI something from which it will derive minimal benifit whilst getting something really nice in return. Example: trade things that are boosted by mid-to-late game buildings (bananas, for instance) in exchange for stuff that is enhanced by buildings you already have in place (wheat, for instance). Another example: the AI has iron but not copper. It still thinks copper is worth paying you 3 resources and gold per turn. Yes, this is somewhat exploitive of the dumb AI. Meh.

Oh, and:

Step 1: found religion
Step 2: generate great prophet
Step 3: build shrine with prophet
Step 4: spread religion (both passively and with missionaries if/when necessary)
Step 5: build market
Step 6: build grocer
Step 7: build bank
Step 8: build Wall Street
Step 9: PROFIT.

Of course, the alternative is to allow your neighbor to found the religion (and maybe build the shrine), and then take it from them with pointy sticks and such. That works too.

-Arrian

[snoopy369]

Pointy sticks is usually the easier solution

[The Priest]

pointy sticks may be easier, and i know it seems to appeal to most people. But, the AI never seems to really get the religion model to work fully - it doesn't really power on with spreading it at the beginning - one missionary to the right place at the right time and the whole civ converts and does the rest of your work for itself. If you really want a serious shrine income, you have to do it yourself.

[Panag]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Pointy sticks is usually the easier solution

and for how long , ....

you cant just do pointy sticks forever , ....

[snoopy369]

And why do you think that you can't do pointy sticks forever?

[Theben]

The points get dull.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Theben
The points get dull.

, put it in a fire to make the point harder , ....



WHY

simple , have a great economy , more money to trade , buy , etc , .... especially in mods like RFC this is important , playing on a large map with many civ's you need money , plain and simple , there is just no way to do without money , not only does a market make people happy it does give you money , just one of the many buildings one will need , .... if you implement coorperations you will need money , ...

and so on and on , ... one could fill five pages here as to why a game needs money , ... pointy sticks dont do it after a certain point , ...

Have a nice pointy day

[Arrian]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Pointy sticks is usually the easier solution

Depends. Hard to use that if your closest neighbors are 50+ tiles away (or on another landmass entirely).

Or if the buggers are protective and have their ciites on hills. I hate that. Happened to me last night. 4 protective archers in a hill capital. Ugly. I forget how many immortals I threw at them without killing a single archer. *shudder*

I *hate* that trait.

-Arrian

[wodan11]

Protective was put there to make people who lean on exploiting AI weakness vs early rush actually experiment with other strategies.

[Arrian]

Damn irritating when I'm trying to exploit AI weakness early...



-Arrian

[smbakeresq]

Arrian,

You are right about the forgetting the %100 tech rate slider once you have more than one city. On the Large, Marathon settings I like, it is tough to get past %50 research rate when hitting midgame and 20+cities, especially when inflation kicks in.

[The Priest]

Not with a decent shrine income it isn't.

[Willem]

Originally posted by The Priest
Not with a decent shrine income it isn't.

I wouldn't consider my Shrine income to be sufficient to keep my troops upgraded. It takes alot more gold than that.

[Colm]

I used a Great Merchant in my game and got 7500 gold for the trade route! A bit later, I got another Great Merchant and again made a trade route; this time 5300.
For the rest of the game, I could place the tech slider to 90% and upgraded lots of units. It almost felt like cheating...