Missing Something Obvious?

[HaplessHorde]

I'm stuck on Warlord difficulty. Every game, the same thing happens: at around the discovery of Gunpowder, Mehmed or Asoka suddenly take off.

Production of food and manufactured goods skyrockets, and I begin to plummet down the leaderboard. I can't figure out what is going on, and so can't counter it. Even if I have the largest land area under control, and farms all over it, it doesn't matter.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance; also feel free to berate me for my stupidity. As long as I've been playing, I think I ought to have figured this out by now, but...

[Brael]

Post the save game and I can give more help. It sounds to me like you're doing the same thing in every single game. Same tech path, same tile improvements, etc...

You mention farms, how many cottages do you build? What sort of food surplus are you running per city? Are you running a specialist economy to compliment the farms?

You say you have the largest land area, how much of that land are you actually working though? What does your city spacing look like? How many cities do you have compared to the AI?

When you say gunpowder do you mean when you get gunpowder or when they do? Asoka's UB is a jail and prioritizes constitution for that reason and therefore gets gunpowder later. Mehmed like Suleiman loves to spy and will go for jails early as well (followed immediately by gunpowder for janissaries).

When you mention production skyrocketing, because of early nationhood/constitution those AI's typically go for the Taj Mahal, giving them a GA right around the time frame you're mentioning, are you sure that's not the production increase you're seeing?

[HaplessHorde]

Here's a save from my most recent game, which I won by dint of skunking everybody on the Space Race, but the other conditions I'm interested in hold true.

Production increases in rival civs are permanent, not GA.

In this particular game my land area is comparable to other civs, but I have had much larger (fully exploited) patches relative to others and still suffered from the same phenomenon.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

[Brael]

Eew warlords, you should really get bts. It's far and away the best version of civ ever released.

Going by city names you seem to have had a war with the greeks where you wiped them out, and a small war with the Romans.

Next, I count 18 cities which isn't horrible for a large map so you seem to be ok there. Where you're messing up though is your city placement. Cities are very far apart wasting land. Here, I drew fat cross borders around every one of your cities, take a look (large image)

Spoiler:

In just coastal tiles without factoring in any buildings you're missing out on 67 tiles which is 134 base commerce. For reference, your very best commerce city generates 56 commerce total from all it's land.

Your specialists don't make sense, in most cities you seem to be running a free specialist and then 2-3 others. If you're going for a specialist economy you need to be running more, if you're not you should get those guys working tiles. They also don't seem to follow any consistent goal, I see artists, merchants, scientists, and engineers.

I count 201 units, if you're going for a peaceful win that might be ok, but for the late game 201 units for 18 cities is pretty low, particularly when you have enough land for 35-40 cities. Judging by your city placement you seem to have tried staying peaceful, which is fine but you should learn to fight. Placing 15 of your own cities is a lot.

You need to make some different buildings. Cities that are founded early like Thebes and Helipolis don't have granaries which are one of the most powerful and important buildings there are. A granary doubles the speed a city grows, not only is that pretty much required for whipping, but faster population means you're working more tiles earlier.

Big commerce cities are missing banks which at 70% science are still rather useful, old cities are missing markets which makes me wonder, especially since they have grocers which come later and provide fewer benefits.

Power. I see many of your cities lack power plants. This is big, factories are expensive. In order to really pay for their hammer costs coal plants (or hydro/nuclear if you prefer) are pretty much required.

Forests. I see a lot of them unchopped. I see you like lumber mills but keep in mind 60/90 hammers (marathon) in the early game is worth more than a lumber mill later on, especially as you go up in levels.

You need more workers. Ordinarily I would say 19 workers for 18 cities is enough but you're using 20 tiles per city, and have A LOT of land inbetween each one. That extra land is going to need more workers, probably more in the range of 36 (2 per city).

Happy/Health. Those numbers in the demographics screen are ratios. Try to keep them as close to 50 as you can without going under. There's no need to build happy/health buildings if you're not hitting the cap. I see several cities making hospitals when they still have 10 health to cap for example.

You should pay more attention to the avoid growth button, you have 20 tiles set aside for cities but you have growth held when the cities are at 11 and 13 in size.

More cottages. Everything is a balancing game, it looks to me like you're giving too many cities hammers and not enough cities cottages. Along the same lines, cities should be specialized too. Hammer cities don't need to generate commerce, commerce cities don't need to generate many hammers (whipping can build all required infrastructure, the most expensive buildings only require a size 12 city).

[HaplessHorde]

Thanks for the input! That's a lot to digest. From your comments, it sounds as though the advisor suggestions for what to build next in a given city are not that useful. Not that I follow them slavishly.

Many of my build decisions were based on time to build vs need. Many times it seemed troops were more vital than taking 20+ turns for infrastructure, then later in the game infra became cheaper, hence "leapfrogging" of more primitive upgrades.

I'd never been clear on the benefit of granaries, aside from when they were demanded by starving citizens.

35-40 cities! I've never come close to that amount, had no idea it was possible/desirable. I've tried to space my cities to prevent them coming into conflict with one another over resources, and also in the early game to block out as much territory/vital resources as possible.

Thanks again, back to the War Room!

[wodan11]

Your next game, come back and post a save circa 0AD, and another at 1000AD. Since your question is basically "how should I have built up my civilization better" we can give constructive suggestions along the way.

[Brael]

Thanks for the input! That's a lot to digest. From your comments, it sounds as though the advisor suggestions for what to build next in a given city are not that useful. Not that I follow them slavishly.

They're not really useful, no. They can't take the idea of specializing cities into account or even building towards a specific strategy.

Many of my build decisions were based on time to build vs need. Many times it seemed troops were more vital than taking 20+ turns for infrastructure, then later in the game infra became cheaper, hence "leapfrogging" of more primitive upgrades.

Not that slavery is the only way to do it, but it's very useful. On epic speed it's 60 hammers per person every 20 turns. Start a granary, whip the next turn, you'll have 1 hammer overflow, 2 less people, and your granary. With a food source the people will grow back rather quickly as well, and do so while the remaining population builds other stuff.

I'd never been clear on the benefit of granaries, aside from when they were demanded by starving citizens.

When a city grows, rather than start at 0/X food it will start half full. Say your city needs 50 food to grow to the next level, without a granary you need to stockpile 50, with a granary you only need to stockpile 25.

35-40 cities! I've never come close to that amount, had no idea it was possible/desirable. I've tried to space my cities to prevent them coming into conflict with one another over resources, and also in the early game to block out as much territory/vital resources as possible.

The more cities you have, the more maintenance costs you have, but spreading your cities out like that gives you maintenance costs as well. Land that isn't being worked is of very little value. One thing with city placement is, costs increase as you go up in difficulty so what's optimal on one difficulty isn't on another. Spreading cities out like that though not only wastes a lot of land but increases the expense of having each city. Plus, what's the point in every city having 20 tiles when it's not working 20 tiles?

[trev]

My personal opinion is for 18 cities, 201 units is plenty providing the balance and positioning is right. For that number of cities, about 50 units for defence, most cities have 1 unit, vulnerable cities have up to 6 units for defence. That leaves enough for 20 naval units, 20 air units and 100+ land units for offence, more than enough. After reasonable defensive measures and naval, air units, I would rarely have more than 30 - 50 offensive units, well used that is enough.
City spacing is an important issue, unless land is useless, around 16 squares on average per city is usually about right, overlapping of squares between cities of 5 or so squares is good, a early hammer city or 2 is essential for military unit production, after that cottage heavily half a dozen or so cities for money, teching, heavily farm several and use specialists as well. Generally cities beyond that number I farm and mine or workshop, watermill a lot for hammers so I can build more military units for war.
As long as the cottaged, specialized cities have suitable commerce buildings, you should be able to match the AI financially and technologically well. And as the extra cities build units for war, that will also be no problem.
For war I usually concentrate on several unit types at various stages of the game, up to 10 siege units for bombarding city walls, sometimes for suicide attacks as well to weaken enemy stacks with collateral damage, up to 10 mounted units with flanking promotions, they attack enemy stacks in the field, weakening their siege units with flanking attacks, swords, maces, rifles with CR promotions (build maces and upgrade for rifles with CR), a smaller number of protective units in offensive stacks (axes/spears early, musketman/rifles with combat/healing later). Late in the game lots of tanks protected with several infantry/marines/SAM infantry is what I use.

[HaplessHorde]

Spending some time with the Barbarian scenario while I mull all this over. How did you guys figure all this out?

[rah]

If you're willing to sacrifice your marriage and and personal life, it's easy.
Practice, practice, practice, and read up on a lot of internet forums.

[Krill]

I'm stuck on Warlord difficulty. Every game, the same thing happens: at around the discovery of Gunpowder, Mehmed or Asoka suddenly take off.

Production of food and manufactured goods skyrockets, and I begin to plummet down the leaderboard. I can't figure out what is going on, and so can't counter it. Even if I have the largest land area under control, and farms all over it, it doesn't matter.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance; also feel free to berate me for my stupidity. As long as I've been playing, I think I ought to have figured this out by now, but...

If you're willing to sacrifice your marriage and and personal life, it's easy.
Practice, practice, practice, and read up on a lot of internet forums.

It worked for me.

[Brael]

Spending some time with the Barbarian scenario while I mull all this over. How did you guys figure all this out?

Practice is good, what I've found teaches me the most though is reading replays of games from good players. A few months in vanilla I was stuck at Prince, reading one really good recap took me to emperor. From there, seeing what others do let me refine my strategy and go up further. That's what I always found to be the most helpful, especially if there's discussion on it so you can see viewpoints on several ways to make a play and sometimes even the outcomes when it's multiple people playing the same game.

The other part is experience, just practice and you get better. I'm really weak with things like cultural wins (struggle on monarch), specialist games (I'm bad at balance, I either use too many or not enough), and making nationhood a really nice civic (wtf is the point of drafting), but throw me on an aggressive ai+deity+raging barbs map and I can pull out a conquest victory, though I can't say it's easy.

Also, if you want practice at combat turn on raging barbs and go up a few difficulty levels. You don't need to finish the game but play a couple maps to 1 ad and see how it goes. Barbarians are great at training you to fight.

My personal opinion is for 18 cities, 201 units is plenty providing the balance and positioning is right. For that number of cities, about 50 units for defence, most cities have 1 unit, vulnerable cities have up to 6 units for defence. That leaves enough for 20 naval units, 20 air units and 100+ land units for offence, more than enough. After reasonable defensive measures and naval, air units, I would rarely have more than 30 - 50 offensive units, well used that is enough.

I would agree that 201 is plenty for 18 cities if he had smaller borders (though I disagree with you about the unit mix). As it is his units are spread thin because he could fit another 18 cities in the amount of territory he has. It's not just cities you're defending but the land area those cities bring you. With the way his cities are spread out 201 isn't enough.