The "I think I might be losing this one, what do I do?" thread

[Primative1]

OK - here goes - ****, cant get it to work, why can I never get any of this crap to work? It refuses to post the file.

[Primative1]

Trying again....

[Primative1]

Hee hee it worked!

It's the basic game patched to 1.29 - be gentle lads - its my first game.

ps just noticed a rubber deposit - can I go into the johnny business?

[vmxa1]

Ok, I give up, what does it mean to go into the johnny business?

[Primative1]

rubber johnny's - profelactics - durex - sheeths

[vmxa1]

Ah the colloquialism's are amazing.

[vmxa1]

Primative1 I did not spend much time looking at the save as I forgot what it was I was suppose to be looking at (sorry).

I expect Dom will give you a more detail report. I did want to touch on a few things that struck me.

You did not get the ToE? Not to dump on you or anything, but you must beat the AI to that wonder at this level. If you have to, use a palace prebuild. One of the reason, I would suspect is that most cities are very poor on mines and hence shields.


You are not even working toward Hoover, at least you could build some hyrdos, even if you cannot get teh wonder. Most players will gear towards ToE and get all the back level techs filled in while the wonder is being built. This allows you to get two good techs, not a junky one left over. Ideally it propels you towards Hoover.

[vmxa1]

Government- you are in communism and are not even at war, why is that? I don't think I have ever use communism in Civ3.
As a non-religious civ, you really cannot afford to switch governments more than once. To me that means going to republic in CivIII or PTW.

You should head towards it quickly, not beeline, but soon.
You are researching Steel instead of get to Electronics.
I looked at just two cities as I figured that was enough for now.

Kaifeng has +3 food and is going to grow next turn. I moved one citizen to the mined hill to get more shields. One worker had just finished irrigation and the citiy had lots of tiles the are not used. It does not need more water, it need shields and roads and RR.
Yet another was irriagting a tile that was not worked or roaded.
At this stage of the game you should have around 30-50 workers and have all tiles roaded and be getting RR up. You are surrounded by AI cities and could have a war at any time.
Are the workers automated, say it ain't so.

Lonchee was making a bank? It is size 15 and does not have a factory or a university? It has few mined tiles and most are not being worked anyway.

Two seperate workers are clearing forrest instead of roading or RR. Worse both are border tiles and should left forrested. One was a tundra tile and should always be forrested. You do not have time to cut forrest right now anyway.

[vmxa1]

Being in commuism is costing you in research and commerce. Not having your RR up at least to the point of connecting most cities is costing you and is risky.

The lack of mines surely goes back to day1. In short, mine until you need more food in most cities. Shielded grasslands are best for mining early. Use workers efficently, that means no extra moving around. Don't mine hills right away as it takes too long. Yes there are times that you must, but in the early BC times, that is rare. Use forrest and mine grassland first.

If you look at some of the ARR/DAR's of the AU games you can see many cities with nothing but mines, except for the plains and certain food tiles. This lets them generate lots of shields to make structures and units.

It puts you in position in the industrial age to grab those wonders. Take the tech lead and hold it.

[petermarkab]

Thought i might get some collective opinion on my current game; a huge, continental standard map, emperor level, playing as Russians.

Here's the savegame - you should take a look before reading the history.

Starting tiles were pretty good, but as i expanded, there were (are) too many flood plains, deserts, plains and a lot of mountainous terrain.

Tried a rather pathetic archer rush on Nederlands (south-west), but pulled back at the last minute - a combination of mercy, setting up a vassal state, and alarm at Portuguese expansion to the north, where i consequently turned my attention.

Found i was falling behind in tech race, and wanted to extract tech, and some rather nice wonders (Pyramids, Great Library) from the tech leaders, Portugal. Also wanted to keep a closer eye on the Germans (far north-east), and their lovely ivory.

Declared war on Portugal, France (south-east) also at war with Portugal, Germany signs alliance with Portugal against me, I sign alliance with France against Portugal and Germany, Holland signs with France against Spain (south) and Portugal, I sign...

You get the picture; six civs, Russia, France and Holland vs Spain, Germany and Portugal.

Approx. 10 turns later, France and Spain make peace, so Spain are now unoccupied by their large neighbour and turn their attention towards me (and the very weak Dutch).

Here's my empire north of Moscow.

...sorry, can't get a screenshot - how do i do this?

And here it is south of Moscow.

...see above

I now have a problem as the first German reinforcements (Ancient Cavalry!) turn up at Yakutsk.

My questions are:

1. Should I make peace with Spain, and how will this affect my rep with Dutch, and more importantly with France?

2. How can I turn the tables on the Portuguese-German alliance?

I am thinking of building 6 or 7 new cities to provide me with roughly 5 to 7 shields per turn per city to kick-start the war effort. Downsides are my current cities will have to take time out to produce the settlers, and I'll be at war for at least 30 turns before i may see positive results.

City sites are:

a. Moscow 6999, on forest next to swamp, (where 6 is east, 9 is north-east etc.)
b. Moscow 322, on plains. Hopefully solid production at size 5.
c. Moscow 447, at archer. Long-term industrial powerhouse.
d. Braga 23. Another long-term industrial powerhouse.
e. Rostov 44. Solid production at size 5.
f. Novgorod 66. Sieze iron.
g. Braga 2221. Incense colony. Will stop irritation friendly settlers from crossing my territory!

Alternatively, I could sue for peace with Portugal and Germany once my alliance with France expires, build these cities peacefully, then relaunch the invasion.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[vmxa1]

As to posting screens, is th e problem that you do not have a means of capturing the screens or you are not familiar with how to post them?

If it is capture you can use the PrtScn to put them in the clpboard and paste to paint.
You can get a free tool like Irfanview to capture.
In any event resize to 800 and convert to jpeg. This can be done with Irfanview with a few clicks.

After you have the screen shot use the browse function in the reply buton to attach it.

[petermarkab]

ok thanks vmxa1 - i was frantically pressing 'PrintScrn' thinking an image of my empire would magically appear!

Will try again...

[petermarkab]

trying a screenshot here - should be Northern Russian Empire!!

[IMG]"C:\My Documents\Peter\86Russ-empire-north-130bc.jpg"[/IMG]

[petermarkab]

well, i've attached the file - the image text is pretty illegible when shrinking to 800 by 600.

[petermarkab]

ok, that worked well!

here's the Southern Russian empire; note the 2 Spanish Swordsmen approaching Novgorod. Yikes!