Trouble at low difficulty levels

[Willem]

Originally posted by jnh140

And thoughts on religion? Two specific questions: I have generally found religion to be generally unhelpful, only really useful for the temple and 10% research bonus of a monastary. Do the 10% bonuses stack for multiple monastaries and temples of multiple religions, and, how important *really* is it to aggressively spread religion to every city in your empire? I understand the benefit of both founding a religion and converting other nations, but I was wondering what you really get from it, outside the religion civic considerations, which I do get.

You're missing the shrine income. If you found a religion and build the shrine, you get 1 gold in your Holy City for every city that has your religion in it. That can result in a substantial income, especially in the late game. I've had Holy Cities generating over 100 gpt simply from religious income. Also, having your religion in a foreign city greatly reduces the espionage points you need in order to see the surrounding area.

As for Monasteries, yes the +10% beakers do stack.

[jnh140]

Originally posted by Willem
As for Monasteries, yes the +10% beakers do stack.

Holy crap, in that case, it seems to make sense to try to aggressively spread every religion to every city and run the civic that cuts the cost of building religious buildings.

I never found hinduism or buddhism, generally, unless I play a spiritual empire. Not in my 2008 gaming, then. I have been playing industrious\creative (woo french?)

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by jnh140

Holy crap, in that case, it seems to make sense to try to aggressively spread every religion to every city ...

Not necessarily. Hammers spent on non-state religion missionaries might be better spent on units to crush your enemies. Also, if a city already has a religion, there is a chance you could fail to spread another relgion to it. Chance of failure goes up with more religions.

....and run the civic that cuts the cost of building religious buildings.

Organized Relgion means cities with the state religion build ALL buildings 25% faster.

[wodan11]

I generally don't bother with monasteries or cathedrals of non-state religion unless needed for cultural border push.

Except that I usuallymake sure each and every religion has a monastery in one of my cities somewhere. I want to make sure I can build missionaries after the monasteries go obsolete and I switch out of OR.

Spreading religion among my cities I will usually do only if I have the shrine, or if I intentionally plan to go Free Religion (usually because of lack of happy resources).

[Theben]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
Except the Great Library, of course, which gives you 6 points from 2 free scientists as well as the 2 from the wonder itself.

RJM

As well as Temple of Artemis which gives you a free Priest, so you get 5 GPP from it. It is expensive though, espec early game, so unless you have marble or are Philosophical (or both) I'd pass it over for something better.

I'm gonna disagree a bit on the "no wonders" rule, at least in SP. Setting your GP farm to build wonders is a good idea if there's no pressing need for it to build anything else at the moment. Basically once you've rushed your neighbor, founded cities up to your pre-CoL/currency limit, and no one is threatening the GP farm city, go ahead and build wonders there. As with everything, have a plan for why you build each wonder you build. Have a lot of coastal cities? Temple of Artemis+Great Lighthouse+Colossus will net you many $$$. Great Wall is good for stopping barbs, of course, but the Great Spy it generates is the ultimate scout: it can't be killed and can even grab huts from under standing barbarians, and once you've scouted enough you drop it into the enemy civ that you think will be the tech leader in the near future and steal, steal, steal tech. I've stolen 6+ techs from an enemy civ this way.

And of course there's the Pyramids+Oracle trick. Build Pyramids one city, build Oracle another and after Pyramids. Oracle=Metalcasting and Great Engineer=Machinery. Add Iron Working and you've Crossbows well before anyone else and the civic options of Representation (peace) and Police State (war). Kill early enemy civs with swordsmen/crossbow combos and then use Rep specialists to out-tech all the others.

[jnh140]

Originally posted by Theben

And of course there's the Pyramids+Oracle trick. Build Pyramids one city, build Oracle another and after Pyramids. Oracle=Metalcasting and Great Engineer=Machinery. Add Iron Working and you've Crossbows well before anyone else and the civic options of Representation (peace) and Police State (war). Kill early enemy civs with swordsmen/crossbow combos and then use Rep specialists to out-tech all the others.

That is an awesome trick. My nasty warmongering usually happens with macemen and catapults, but going after folks with crossbowmen totally turns axemen into warriors.

its the clever stuff like this that im lacking, my teching tends to be whatever seems nice at the time, i'm not particularly goal oriented.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Theben

I'm gonna disagree a bit on the "no wonders" rule, at least in SP. Setting your GP farm to build wonders is a good idea if there's no pressing need for it to build anything else at the moment. Basically once you've rushed your neighbor, founded cities up to your pre-CoL/currency limit, and no one is threatening the GP farm city, go ahead and build wonders there. As with everything, have a plan for why you build each wonder you build. Have a lot of coastal cities? Temple of Artemis+Great Lighthouse+Colossus will net you many $$$. Great Wall is good for stopping barbs, of course, but the Great Spy it generates is the ultimate scout: it can't be killed and can even grab huts from under standing barbarians, and once you've scouted enough you drop it into the enemy civ that you think will be the tech leader in the near future and steal, steal, steal tech. I've stolen 6+ techs from an enemy civ this way.

And of course there's the Pyramids+Oracle trick. Build Pyramids one city, build Oracle another and after Pyramids. Oracle=Metalcasting and Great Engineer=Machinery. Add Iron Working and you've Crossbows well before anyone else and the civic options of Representation (peace) and Police State (war). Kill early enemy civs with swordsmen/crossbow combos and then use Rep specialists to out-tech all the others.

You bring up a good point. "No wonders" should not be viewed as a blanket rule. It's more of a useful principle in learning to play the game, or learning a new difficulty level. Learn not to rely on wonders. Learn what opportunities are lost with the decision to build a wonder. Then, when you're comfortable playing without wonders, open that door back up and learn how to use them well, instead of just hoarding all you can get or hinging your strategy each and every game on getting one wonder or a set group of wonders.

[Theben]

Originally posted by jnh140
That is an awesome trick. My nasty warmongering usually happens with macemen and catapults, but going after folks with crossbowmen totally turns axemen into warriors.

its the clever stuff like this that im lacking, my teching tends to be whatever seems nice at the time, i'm not particularly goal oriented.

This trick depends on the civ you play. The 2 best that benefit are the Native Americans (whom I play 90% of the time) and the Chinese, particularly Qin Shi Huang. The Natives due to their leader traits (Philosophical benefits specialists and wonder GPP production, while protective helps the crossbows) and their UB, the Totem Pole which gives +3 exp to archer units, aka crossbows. Qin has protective and Industrious, so you waste less on wonders, and their crossbow unit has extra 1st strikes as well as barrage. Note that if you fail to get either wonder you can still pull it off by building a forge and either building the Great Lighthouse or getting Code of Laws early and adopting Caste System. GL gets you merchants, and Caste allows multiple merchant specialists, which can lightbulb Metalcasting. Then build a forge and assign an engineer which will net you the majority of science needed for Machinery once you have a GE. Getting the 2nd Great Person will take awhile, so better to build Oracle if possible since it's cheap.

That said, don't get too cocky. Even a Drill IV crossbow can be brought low by a cheap Combat I horse archer, and City Raider swordsmen are better for city assault. The rule to pick your targets and plan carefully still applies.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Just thought I'd check back into this thread. Using the various helpful hints from Poly, I've been managing to win at Noble -- thanks guys! However, so far I've only won at space race, and only risen to the dizzying heights of Warren G. Harding. In light of that, some observations and questions (I'm playing vanilla, btw):

1) I still have no idea how many units to build. I generally try to get 3 per city in early (some mix of spearmen, axemen, and swordsmen), then develop a small response force of maybe half-a-dozen horsemen (if I have horses, which I didn't in at least one game I won). After that, I tend to wait until I need an army before I build catapults, more horsemen, etc. It's a pretty passive strategy; it works if I don't have psycho neighbors, but leaves me vulnerable to stacks of doom when I do. Anyway, what's your general rule of thumb and method for building troops?

2) In the last game I played, I was for the first time very stingy with allowing Open Borders. I started saying no as a way of isolating the Arabs to a small peninsula by building a city at a chokepoint; this worked like a charm, so I decided to say know to other civs, too. I know this cost me a +1 with each civ, but it otherwise seemed a fine plan. What's your strategy on trading Open Borders?

3) I've got no Specialist/GP game, even when I play philosophical civs. For one thing, I can never seem to generate enough food in a city to pull more than one citizen out for specialist duty, which means GP take forever. It's making me rethink building wonders; in my last game, I built the Pyramids (early representation with an organized civ was pretty great; since the civ was also financial, it meant I could switch to universal suffrage as soon as I had a decent surplus, which also rocked). Having the Pyramids meant I got a bunch of GE's, which was pretty sweet. I've read most of what I can find on this board about GP's, but I just can't seem to make it work in my game. Any other tips?

Thanks, everybody!

[Solomwi]

1) I build troops as the default setting, so to speak, only pausing in a given city when something else should clearly be prioritized (that bar is different from city to city, obviously). As a rule of thumb, I try to always have a few cities building units on a given turn. For buildings that will go in every city (courthouse, forge, etc.), I rotate among my main troop cities so I'm never at a complete standstill on troop production. As far as positioning, I favor putting most of my defense in border cities, and just garrisoning those farther back with a single unit. The goal there is to destroy any enemy stack as soon as possible once it enters my borders.

2) I want OB with as many civs as possible for foreign trade routes, mainly. That said, there are plenty of specific reasons I'll avoid OB with a particular civ, and you described one perfectly valid one, though I would have probably limited it to Arabia.

3) As I posted above, specialists are generally faster and more reliable GPP sources than wonders. Choose a site with good food potential (river, FP/grass, multiple food specials) and dedicate it to producing food and working specialists. Farming two FPs gives you enough food to support two specialists (and keep the city center food going to growth). So does farming four grasslands, or one irrigated grassland corn. Look for clusters of seafood, too (it helps to conquer an enemy capital for this ). Concentrate production on buildings that allow specialists, and/or switch to Caste System (available with CoL, allows unlimited scientists, merchants and artists). If the problem is that you never have cities you can do that with, I'd suggest rethinking your placement choices, and making it a point to settle at least one such site. Similarly, if the problem is that you're building cottages and working hills whenever you have such a site, I'd suggest making yourself dedicate one city to food production next chance you get. Farm everything. Work mines only when needed. Keep a close eye on growth and adjust the city's workforce when it grows to make sure you're getting your specialists and keeping your food surplus up.

[jnh140]

I too have been rocking at noble, mostly thanks to a clearer understanding of specialists and the tech tree. Getting the techs in a workable order is a big help, lest you end up in a situation where you don't have really, really important techs. Moved up to prince for my latest round.

I couldn't figure out why i had no money. turns out sailing is pretty important early on, with those coastal cities i tend to build.

[Blaupanzer]

Sailing and metalworking are "hidden" money techs. Your $ accumulation seems to jump with each of them. Of course with sailing it's coastal commerce. Not as clear about the mechanism with metalworking (besides the Colossus), but the effect is real enough. Currency, economics, and corporation all add trade routes (as do castles, a strange little bonus). With the two buildings that boost trade in coastal cities, those trade routes can be made to pay big time.

[jnh140]

I've had a wonderful economic expansion in my current game. after fighting a bloody and pointless war with the khmer, I got defensive pacts with a couple of my big, angry neighbors, and set about building markets, banks, grocers, and customs houses in most of my cities. I love customs houses with free markets. This has been the biggest jump in commerce i've ever seen in a game. Just got oxford up in my cottaged capital, and wallstreet has about two turns left.

Once I get that done, I need a massive military expansion, as the portugese, the power player on the block, has lost his tech lead and has taken to politely demanding techs.

Its amazing the difference all this makes. I tend to run free markets, emancipation, univ. suff. right now im on theocracy, as I need the +8 relations from religions with my two main neighbors, and i didn't expand religions as effectively as i should have. I was running 70% science during the second war with the khmer, before the economic build up, and within 25 turns I was pulling 80% tech and bringing in 225 gpt.

Do people with oxford\wallstreet in a coastal cottaged capital tend to run bueracracy regardless, or do you usually stick with free markets?

[Ming]

Originally posted by jnh140
Do people with oxford\wallstreet in a coastal cottaged capital tend to run bureaucracy regardless, or do you usually stick with free markets?

I assume you mean free speech and not free markets, since you can run both free markets and bureaucracy at the same time

I usually stay in bureaucracy probably longer than I should. If you have tons of towns, or really need the culture, Free Speech can be nice. If you are running a specialist economy, and you have very few towns, Free Speech really doesn't do a heck of a lot. I might switch to vassalage for a while if I'm in a military buildup mode, but I'm usually lazy and find myself staying in bureaucracy to keep my capital going strong. Now, if my capital isn't all that good...

[wodan11]

Assuming Free Speech is available....

If you're running a SE, then cottage your capitol and put Wall Street there, run 0-20% on the slider with Bureaucracy.

If you're running a CE, then I would probably only run Bureaucracy if I had a production capital for units or for wonders.