Economy Help

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Diadem
Actually in my test all my cities already had a 2-gold traderoute, because I had a few cities on islands (100% bonus). And I've never seen 3 gold traderoutes early game, tbh.

And I made them size 6 because that was the happiness cap with religion and 2 happiness resources. Capital could've been 1 higher I guess. Imho 2 early happiness resources is already pretty lucky. Though I guess if you do have 8 cities you'll generally have more resources.

No, I think my test was pretty realistic.

I had cities with 3 and 4 gp traderoutes in the early game in last saturday's MP game... it's amazing what starting on an isolated archipelago when the rest of the world is on a Pangaea does for you

[Theben]

All you really need is CoL and Writing. Run an SP economy with scientists for research and Caste System for any merchants you need for balance. I've run 0%-10% science and still outteched the AI. This is at Monarchy level. Once you get Currency the extra trade routes alone are enough to allow further expansion.

[Colm]

Diadem, I was just like you, a slow expansion and try to keep my science at least at 70% or higher. It will work pretty well and you can pretty much go alongside the other civs.

But then I thought, let's try something different and started building cities all over the place. I had to put science back to 20% and teching went REALLY slow (trading some techs with neighbors helped to keep up). But after a while, all those many cities started to produce quite a lot of science and after I couldn't expand anymore (because of space shortage), the money started to roll in again and upkeep went down fast. Slowly I could bring the tech up and was teching twice as fast as all the other civs.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by rah

I think focusing on getting the first 3-4 religions is not the best way to go. While it can help some later in the game, I think you give up too much early. If you were in an MP game, I think you'd suffer greatly. NOTE: I am a touch biased since I probably play more MP than SP.

No, no, no. I meant that in this period the religions are gained. By whoever, not necessarily you. It's the period in which religions coalitions start forming as well.

The ancient period is about 90% of the game imho. After the ancient period you usually know if you're gonna win or not.

[ben04]

If you have a lot of land or a military superiority then expand as fast as possible.

I've won quiet a number of games where I was at 0% science in the early game (pre COL) for a longer period of 10-20 turns. In the early a library and scientists are all you need.

1 library + 2 scientists = 7.5 beakers a turn

After a few turns a great scientist will be born. Settle him.

1 library + 2 scientists + 1 GS = 15 beakers a turn

Add a cottage per city and you can pay for the upkeep.

That's all you need to research any of the key technologies which make it possible to get larger beaker sources.

If by early game you mean pre pottery and pre writing then either you don't value those techs enough or you can't have 8 cities because you didn't have enough time to conquer or found that many.

[rah]

Originally posted by Diadem


No, no, no. I meant that in this period the religions are gained. By whoever, not necessarily you. It's the period in which religions coalitions start forming as well.

The ancient period is about 90% of the game imho. After the ancient period you usually know if you're gonna win or not.

Understood. We do have quite a few players that can only keep their economy going with shrines and are quite myopic in their game play. As I said, those that do that in MP games usually don't survive the early game.

[Blaupanzer]

"Myopic" is such a nice word for stubborn foolishness.

[rah]

The last person I used that term about thought it was a compliment. (focused)

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by ben04
If you have a lot of land or a military superiority then expand as fast as possible.

I've won quiet a number of games where I was at 0% science in the early game (pre COL) for a longer period of 10-20 turns. In the early a library and scientists are all you need.

1 library + 2 scientists = 7.5 beakers a turn

After a few turns a great scientist will be born. Settle him.

1 library + 2 scientists + 1 GS = 15 beakers a turn

Add a cottage per city and you can pay for the upkeep.

That's all you need to research any of the key technologies which make it possible to get larger beaker sources.

If by early game you mean pre pottery and pre writing then either you don't value those techs enough or you can't have 8 cities because you didn't have enough time to conquer or found that many.

I'm OK with conquering a bunch of cities early on and tanking the economy, that works because I have enough military left to defend what take, and I usually pick up workers on the attack. Where I run into trouble is when I try to REX peacefully (like I have a bunch of great land to develop and what I could take from the AI is meh, jungle or whatever). In the case where I try to REX peacefully, I never build enough military to defend what I build or enough workers to develop it. If I build enough military or workers, then I feel like I'm not expanding quickly enough (by quickly enough, I mean quickly enough to bottom out the science rate in a hurry-- the quicker you bottom it out, the quicker it can come back). Any thoughts on how to improve this balance?

Specific example:
Got an awesome start as Ghandi, monarch, fractal. I had a corner of a big continent to myself -- beautiful land.

Research: poly for hindu, bronze, worker techs, then to writing

Build: worker, warrior, warrior, worker (whip), stonehenge (chopped), settler at size four (chopped/whipped).

I founded Hindu which spread to everyone but Shaka and threw up two (relatively) quick cities toward the AI to cut off Shaka and claim some delicious gold. I made a point of befriending Toku and Ghenghis by joining their war on Darius. Later I joined a war against Shaka for the same reason. My intention was to REX up my corner of the world ASAP and lightbulb techs along the way, then use my land grab to recover my economy. The lightbulbing worked fine (despite too many prophets), as did the diplomacy (one little skirmish with Shaka) the REXing, not so much. I was stuck at three, then at four cities seemingly forever because I had to build some military (I had toku, genghis and shaka on my contintent after all). After I did expand, I was woefully worker poor for a long time and was working unimproved tiles. I got beaten to spots in "my land" and to juicy barb cities that should have been mine I'm not sure how I could have gone quicker without being completely open to Shaka's aggression. I build 'henge and Oracle. Oracle I guess I could have skipped, but forges from MC gave some needed happy with the gold. I needed 'henge for border pops and for GP points. I'm still going to win the game, but it should have been even easier given the cherry start. What's the strat -- get to three cities then have one building military, one building workers and one building settlers? Alternate settlers/workers and military at several sites, whipping between? Have each new city whip it's own worker at size two or build it from scratch?

Oh, and I know, thread is useless without screenshots. I can post the save when I get home, well, probably tomorrow actually. It's a pretty sweet map so if anyone else wants to play it I'd be interested.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by rah
The last person I used that term about thought it was a compliment. (focused)

That person didn't know what myopic means, did they...

[snoopy369]

DirtyMartini, the usual answer is to have one city at the beginning (one of your first 3, or so) build ONLY military units (nothing else, ever, except for buildings that contribute to building mil units), and then at some later point add a second (and a third...) when necessary/possible. That point varies by the quality of your first mil city, by the number of AIs around you, by the difficulty of the game, etc...

Then you can build additional units when you have time in other cities, but you always have at least that one city churning out unit after unit. You can focus on commerce or workers or expansion in the other cities without worrying about your military.

In your particular game, the biggest mistake you made was making stonehenge prior to the first settler. It's not even doing anything for you at that point... you should build the first settler then stonehenge, if you are set on making stonehenge (which if you have hinduism shouldn't be necessary, I would think).

[DirtyMartini]

snoopy369 --

I build stonehenge for the GP points for the shrine primarily. Also, if you rely on religion for border pops, you need yet another pump in addition to military and settler -- a missionary pump. Also, in the interest of brevity, I abbreviated a little bit above. I actually only partially built Stonehenge before building the settler (while regrowing from size 1 after whipping worker number two). Once I hit size 4, I switched to settler, chopped/whipped it, then went back to Stonehenge. I think I'd do that again. I probably wouldn't build oracle though.

And yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the idea of a military pump as the second city. In this case I didn't do it that way because I wanted to claim some prime land toward the AI that was better suited to science (flood plains + gold) before the AI snapped it up. I now have a military pump functioning nicely, but it was city #4 and took some time to get up to speed. I survived a Shaka incursion on whipped axes and spears.

I'm more interested in what people do apart from the military pump, I can see how that element takes care of garrison building. How bout the settler/worker piece -- Do they grow their cap up to happy limit then build a continuous stream of settlers until they're done REXing? Do they alternate whipped settlers and infrastructure? How do the new cities get workers? From a third city, build/whip their own, other?

[Krill]

RAH, was that me?

[Diadem]

I'd like to see some saves of that game DirtyMartini, your start, but also a few intermediate saves if you keep them. Best way to see what you've done is by actually seeing it, after all

With Ghandi, because you start with Mining and Mysticism, it's a viable strategy to grab Monotheism before you build your 2nd city. That way your capital will be a double holy city. It delays your early growth a bit, but you'll make up for it in income.

[Theben]

I pump out 2 settlers before even thinking of wonders. That said in my latest game @ Monarch level I ran into Dutch early and had some cash, so I built/whipped 3 Dog Soldiers and upgraded 2 warriors to Dogs and sent all 5 against Willie, who hadn't adopted Slavery yet (if he had I would've had no chance). I got to his capital and lost 2 units to his 2 archers and then conquered him. I also built a city with 6-7 flood plains in it's BFC and stone just outside. Between my capital and the former Dutch one I've actually built EVERY wonder in the game, with the exception of the Mauseolleum, b/c I thought I had built it already and forgot about it! Normally I don't wonder whore that much but after being able to build both the Oracle and Stonehenge early I figured why not try?