Failing miserably on Prince setting

[brandonjm8]

Well, I tried a new game last night. It didn't go well

I started as the Chinese (not Mao but the other bloke) since they had Industrious and Financial as special traits.

I was placed better on the map this time, I had a lot of land to work with and chose my starting city next to the coast as there was a lot of hammers and food tiles available; as well as the commerce bonus.

I built a work boat as soon as I was able to and worked the clam tiles for my city; I also tried operating the workers manually and had them build farms. I had never bothered with the specific tile working thing before so I got to play around with city growth and production values, and I even managed to build the Pyramids through rigorous forest clearing.

I was top of the money pile and secured access to a stone, pig and fish resource early on.

Despite all this I was still waaaaay behind the other nations on points, what more does this game want from me? How can I keep up the pace with the other guys? What factors are considered in calculating the score?

I built farms and cottages on the food tiles and built mines on the hammers, as well as a quarry to hurry up the Pyramids. It was all going well until I was mullered by barbarians as I had a terrible army (for some reason I was being killed by lions when normally they're pretty easy).

I ended up entering world builder and placing tanks on my borders to destroy the barbarians. Then I quit the game in frustration as it's no fun if you cheat, i'm going to try again tonight. At the very least, I learned how to use the tiles better and use the workers effectively to some degree, so I guess it all wasn't a total loss.

It was again on Prince setting. I know, I got cocky.

just play without barbians til you get better, or build the great wall asap.

[Hauptman]

Alrighty FNG... The whole point of these desicions is choosing what works best when... You have to choose wich path is better for what occasion. Unfortunatly that requires experience and trial and error. We can only toss the basics at you.

The game score, Ignore it. It means very little. Its a compilation of your civ size and number of researched (or traded) technologies. Usually land squares adds more than techs, however more land squares does not mean power, if you over expanded.

Since it is a game of desicions, you cannot be "the best" in multiple directions at the same time. Ive had games where i was at the bottom of the score list, with a single city that could create macemen (samurai) before ano domino. All of the sudden not beeing able to build markets or having a religious income matters not. As my samurai will soon capture plenty.

Im a grognard at heart so I usually always lean to military dominance in my games, but it's also quite possible to turn pure diplomacy into a game win also. Thats what makes the game so great. Choices.

The absolute best thing you could do for info on what people would do would be post a 4000bc save game. Say "Ok what should i do with this?" Play it your way as people have time to try it out and post comments, then compare, reload try it their way and see where that leaves ya. Knowing full well that trying the exact same thing on the next game could do nothing good for ya.

The absolute most important thing to doing well is plan ahead. Take a look at the game's start to decide what you want to accomplish. Get some scouts (or warriors) out to see the world, then take into considerations your land and neighbors. Surrounded by jungles and Montezuma? Well that games going to be so very different than having lots of good vacant land with Mansa Munsa beiing your closest neighbor.

As far as them nasty ole barbars. Again plan ahead for them, dont rely on a single warrior to defend your cap unless you have stone close by and beeline masonry. Get archery and make some units. Post those archers out on hills to both fog bust, and give the barbars something to attack before they get to your cities.

Learning is never a waste, even if it is only for a video game. So those failed games are learning, not wasted life.



I believe my first games were on noble, the move to prince was nothing special, but you have to have your plans laid out well in advance to even attempt Monarch +.

[wodan11]

Well... I guess if you don't chop early, I can see why you under value workers...

I hardly said I don't chop.

At question here is do you chop before you even make your second unit? Before turn 36?!?

Come on, Ming. I took the time, you could too, and give some thought into a response. Or is the turkey weighting you down?

[Hauptman]

Thought about it a second and figured it post some actual templates for you, to see if that helps get my "plan ahead" idea accross.

Japanese games, I love playing as the japs when im frustrated at anything, as going on a conquest spree makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

The plan even before the map finishes loading. Macemen as quickly as possible. Then use those macemen to both expand my size and fund future research via city conquest $$.

Plop Kyoto down and have a look and how best to generate early commerce/research. 90% of jap games should start coastal as they start with fishing as a tech. Get work boats out then build a worker to start mining hills (also a start tech). If you got lucky you have gold, if not you will need to research pottery. Then you research your way towards priesthood. Start the oracle and begin researching towards writing. Absolutely imperitive that oracle completes just after writing and not before. So that often requires manually juggling tiles between hammers and commerce. Choose code of laws as your free tech, you gain both a religion and an important step. Change civics to caste system and have your capital use that fish to feed as many scientists as possible. During all this you might have had time to plant one or 2 more cities. Use those cities to protect the capital via unit production and giving any invaders something less important to attack.

Use scientists to research towards machinery and civil service forgoing all but the most obviose of worker techs. I usualy use code of laws as my trade tech to get caught up on the other tech lines. mainly because I already gained the religion, and its also a bonus to have your neighbors pre build courthouses for you. Stay freindly with your neighbors. The fewer distractions you have the better. If that requires gifting techs that they ask for so be it, as long as it is not a military tech. Mainly just try to match thier religions.

If your 3 cities donot have iron. reboot. or trade with a "friend" for it. The research times for civil service and machinery will be long and arduous. But the payoff will be miraculouse. Civil service gives buerocracy, wich is doubly effective for a small empire. and speeds the push on machinery. Once you finish the 2 target techs you can upgrade exsisting units (using money from the code of laws tradeoff), and begin the buildup. Use something to scout your neighbors to see the number of units they have and use that knowlegde to base the stack's start off size. Ive started the wars with as few as 3 samies. And sometimes waited til construction and 10+ samies for my attack stack. Depends on how your neighbors did. conquer everyone and everything until gunpowder.


The Early Rush....

Someone with a good early Unique unit. babylon, Mansa Munsa, persia, inca (on monarch + ), Rome.

Research anything you need for worker techs and your UU tech, Build UU and conquer 2 neighbors. Now you should have 3 GREAT cities, plus a few minor ones, as well as planty of land to backfill at your leasure. Use your Empires early size to give you the advantage. Research rates can be low but using lots of comerce tiles and trading techs for cash can offset that. You will have to tech deep, donot waste time and money researching techs you can trade for. Research stuff noone else has to trade it away. Before you know it you will be a tech leader with a huge empire, as long as you got that infrastructure up and running.

[trev]

I tend to focus on city growth asap, therefore with worker first and your scenario, I would have kept working the cows even while unimproved, while building the workboat, this would have grown the city 4 - 5 turns earlier, along with some extra commerce. If the forested plains hill was used by your 2nd city citizen, the loss in hammers would have been regained within 4 turns of city growing to size 2, net result is approximately a city further along the growth path with no net loss in hammer production etc. I always very early on favour food wherever possible as the extra city citizen soon makes up for delays in early hammers. This is why the scenario of workboat first which delays accumulation of food for many more turns is the less preferred option. If I can be the first civ to size 5, I am well on to the way to winning the game as it then gives the the best flexibility and speed in creating units/workers/settlers as needed in the future or wonders.

[brandonjm8]

I tend to focus on city growth asap, therefore with worker first and your scenario, I would have kept working the cows even while unimproved, while building the workboat, this would have grown the city 4 - 5 turns earlier, along with some extra commerce. If the forested plains hill was used by your 2nd city citizen, the loss in hammers would have been regained within 4 turns of city growing to size 2, net result is approximately a city further along the growth path with no net loss in hammer production etc. I always very early on favour food wherever possible as the extra city citizen soon makes up for delays in early hammers. This is why the scenario of workboat first which delays accumulation of food for many more turns is the less preferred option. If I can be the first civ to size 5, I am well on to the way to winning the game as it then gives the the best flexibility and speed in creating units/workers/settlers as needed in the future or wonders.

all depends on evoirment too, if im blessed with alot of floodplains, i will make settlers when im 3 or 4 cause of the high surplus of food along with the one hammer, especially with an imp ruler, work boat first or worker has too many determining factors and decisions will always be based on surroundings, civ leader, too many to mention.

[Calibos]

Hey guys,

So i've played through a few times and made a few different save points to try out different things, I actually did better than before so atleast i'm making improvement

I was actually one of the most powerful nations early in the game, it was much easier to maintain competition with a good starting block, though now my empire seems to falter towards the middle of the campaign (Renaissance era-ish).

It seems the AI just has a huge advantage when it comes to technology, is it even possible to stay ahead later in the game? I managed to turn Togukwara (sic) into my ***** pretty early on (perhaps too early on...) and just got him to forfeit tech and gold, though a few other nations had already discovered Steel and Scientific Method when I was coming up to Chemistry :s

Is it possible to start a game leaning towards military dominance, and then change to scientific progress once a few nearby cities have been captured? This is what I did and I started falling behind at a phenomonal rate.

I know i'm meant to upload save files but was just wondering if someone could help me out with directions.

Thanks

[rah]

Some civs will out tech you (on the higher levels) some will not. Find those that are and punch them in the nose. If you do that enough, you will be left with those that do not out tech you.

On Prince you should be able to maintain a lead unless your land really sucked.

[Calvin Vu]

I play rather wodan on this one and build workboat first the vast majority of the time, even when I do not have Fishing to start the game with. I recently finished a game where I built Stonehenge first while waiting to learn Fishing then switch over to build two workboats after I get it (in a location with 4 clams and one food resource, IIRC) That's the game which I reported to have an early crossover starting with the Inca. The extra gold in the early game helps a lot with the research (and the ability to get to Alphabet very early to trade the minor techs and gain a big early tech advantage).

[Ming]

Yeah... that type of style works very well if you don't have any close by aggressive neighbors. And getting to Alpha first gives you a strong advantage if you are playing with tech trading. Smart moves as long as you as don't have to fight a war. A good way to crank the science/techs.

[rah]

Yeah those work boats are even more appreciated when you're financial.

[Ming]

In last nights MP game, while I wasn't financial, I started on a tip with only 4 land squares I could work, and 3 crabs. I didn't even bother building warriors or workers at first. I started on a warrior, and then switched over to the WB the second i researched fishing (first tech). And when I did finally build a worker, it was to build the road so that I could reach the rest of the land mass quicker.

[rah]

With a start like that you can almost treat it as an SP game and ignore your first warrior a bit since you'll see someone coming well in advance.

[Ming]

I will admit I was pleased that the first two civs (which you were one of) that found me did so with scouts. I would have had to switch over to a warrior much sooner if either of the initial contacts had been warriors.

[rah]

Yeah, it beats meeting Monty on turn 4 hahahahahah