W#@&#@&*#@&*#@* Barbarian axemen

[Heresson]

I'm playing at prince. If I build Great Wall, I am safe from barbs, but, strangely, I am doing horrible in my new game. I don't know why. Even with colosseum, two temples, I have malcontents in my cities.

[Theben]

What else is going on? Slaving too much? War weariness? Lack of happy resources?

[Heresson]

I dunno. I haven't played Civ4 for many months and it seems I forgot all it was about. I do not start wars. I like to have a peacefull empire. But the problem is that for each city I get -6 gold, so I can't really afford that, while other empires seem to be spreading without any problems. That's one.
In my recent game, I've had horrible problem with cash, and then, suddenly, it ended, changing from -10 to +28. And I don't know why. It wasn't about any new tech... Hm, I must practice more.

[Heresson]

In general, my plan for the game is to:
- have 2-3 religions started at my cities in early game
- have Great Wall to protect myself against barbs
- build Stonehenge or Oracle, to get 2 prophets and build these super-temples that give You +1 gold for every city with that religion
- then, send, send, send missionaries all over the world
That's a very nice plan, but it's very hard to build both GW and Stonehendge.

Perhaps the cash change had something to do with building Hanging Gardens? Is that possible?

[The Priest]

Nice plan.

We all play differently, but if that is your plan my one suggestion would be get some missionaries out earlier. If you can manage to get a missionary into a civ which doesn't have any religion yet, it will then convert to that religion and start to spread it itself. So two or three early missionaries can mean you get two or three very friendly civs plus a lot of gold. The later you leave it the more chance they have already got religion, and then your missionary only gives you the one city, one gold. (note you need open borders to use the missionaries).

Building GW and Stonehenge is possible enough if you focus on it and are either industrious or have stone. WIthout one of those you woudl be very lucky.

[Nugog]

Heresson - attach a save so we can have a look at it maybe?

[chuckdelicious]

My barbarian defense plan is generally rooted in having enough cash to upgrade a couple of warriors. Pop the warriors out early, go kill some lions and upgrade one to shock and the other to woodsman 2. Upgrade them to axes as necessary. The axeman who gets the woodman 2 upgrade will soon upgrade to 3 and have healing abilities, making him super useful for defending.

In general, I find the Great Wall a bad wonder choice. It kills your production for about 50 turns where you could be kicking out units/workers/settlers. In the early game, this is critical. Actually, the only early wonder I ever go for is the oracle.

Oh, and the Hanging Gardens could definitely help your economy out, depending on what you do with the new citizens. For me, it usually makes red faces on all of my cities.

[Colm]

For some reason, everytime I build the Hanging gardens, my gold income drops dramatically. A bit odd since with a higher population, you work more tiles which in turn would results in more income.

[ColdPhoenix]

Each city's maintenance is related to how big the city is so you'd expect a drop in gold unless the extra population in most of the cities is working a tile with a few base commerce at least (which is unlikely as it takes a while for those cottages to grow).