INC's Game Log - Please Advise

[bobbo008]

maybe a couple islands for a bit extra commerce if its convenient (and they're not 1 tile islands). or maybe i just like island hopping.

but definitely germany.

[vmxa1]

Yes that is solid looking. I would say that you could take note of the cities that are not growing and not size 12. See why, if size 6, do they need an aqua. If not, they do not have enough food, so time to break down and irrigate a tile or two. Remember I said when you need it for growth, it is time to irrigate. Coastal cities may need a harbor, you may have to take a tile from one of the other cities.

The others have already mentioned you do not want to stay in despotism. The when is the tricky part. If you are religious, you can do it right after you get the tech. If not, then you may wait a bit to get a decent timing.

Basically you have to bite the bullet. I tend to try to make sure I am not in the middle of a wonder build or a settler about to pop out, that sort of thing. Don't go by me on this as I am very likely to wait a bit too long. Oh and of course if in GA, wait.

[rush]

I can see Coal & Iron, but no railroad. Start building railroad now. First connect all your cities, next built rails on all cities squares producing Wonder, and finally on every squares you can find.

Does Germany has rifleman ? Do you have Military Tradition ? If not, you may want to built loads of Knights, upgrade to Calvary and go after the Germans. Longbowman are not really useful during the Industrial Age.

And yes, move to Republic or Democracy.

[Arrian]

Wow, major improvement on terrain improvement. Dedicating one city to being a worker pump (workers every 2 turns) for a long time (basically forever) will allow you to boost the population of all cities to size12 well before you enter the industrial age, though. That's something to work on. Lots of cities = good. Lots of BIG cities = great!

The government thing is huge. Despotism is the worse government in the game, unless you count anarchy. Typically, I recommend The Republic as the best choice. Get it early, switch, and stay there. There are times when an early switch to Republic can hurt initially, but mostly it's a plus from the get-go, particularly if you know how to use the luxury slider to keep your people happy w/o the "military police" factor. If you don't, learn, because the lux slider is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. Further, the length of time you spend in anarchy is partly dependent upon the size of your empire (# of cities, I believe). Therefore an early switch will generally mean you're doing it with a small empire and thus (on average) shorter anarchy.

Next, once you develop a solid core, it's time to build up an offensive juggernaught and go bonk some heads (as the CivII military advisor liked to say). The best way to do this is to utilize upgrading to effectively trade gold for shields. The most basic and typically most powerful is the horsemen -> knight (or even straight to Cavalry) upgrade. Plan ahead and build Leonardo's Workshop. Avoid Chivalry for a while, and build up a large number of horsemen. Then get Chivalry (or, if the tech pace is really moving, you can ignore it and beeline for Military Tradition) and upgrade. Then unleash hell.

In a recent game in which I found myself with far too much money (Greece is really good at getting silly rich) but a smallish military, I did the Horse to Cav upgrade... with 80 horsemen. This was on a standard map, and was a wee bit of overkill, actually. 25-50 is usually a good range to shoot for on that map size, depending on your requirements (how many AI empires are living on YOUR continent? how well-armed are those AI empires?).

There is also a lot of potential profit in early warfare (Dominae speaks truth about the usefulness of a handful of well-handled archers), but I've rambled on long enough for now. Good luck, INC!

-Arrian

[Solomwi]

Only Arrian simultaneously has a "smallish" military and 80 horsemen to upgrade.

[Arrian]

Oh, not simultaneously! When I decided my army was too small, I had something like this:

1 3x Ancient Cav army.
5 Ancient Cavs
5 hoplites
5 med infs
5 knights
5-10 horsemen
5 trebuchets

Those were the "free" units actually available to invade someone. I had some more units (a few AC, crusaders & med infs) on coastal defense and whatnot. I decided that this state of wimpyness, coupled with over 7000 gold in the bank, was ridiculous.

I was at war at the time, and basically was just killing incoming enemy units while my AC army & some knights came back from the far south (I had just finished off one AI civ when one of my northern neighbors attacked me).

I upgraded the remaining horsies I had to knights, cut my iron, and built horsemen while I counterattacked into enemy territory. I actually finished the enemy off with knights/med inf/AC. When I hit F3 to check my horseman building progress, I was up to 75 horsemen Nearly every city had been producing horsemen, at 2-4 turns per.

IIRC this resulted in 81 Cavalry (this includes some upgraded knights, and some losses of horsemen that became and fought in the war). It was Nathan-esq.

-Arrian

[Solomwi]

I did something similar in my current game. I had about 15-20 MW and 5-6 spears and India declared war on me in the north. I had been stocking them in the south because India and I were still expanding toward each other, yet I was already bordering Arabia and the Zulu in the south. I had a few to the north harvesting barbs, and was able to use them to keep India's lone spearman from taking an empty city, and started pumping them out on that same 2-4 turn basis and flooding India with them.

At the end of that war, I had the same situation in reverse. Most of my MWs were in the north checking Carthage and harvesting barbs while I settler flooded the immense area that victory over India let me block off. All of a sudden, the Zulu attack, so my production machine goes back into business. About halfway through the Zulu War, I turned it off with about 70-75 MWs and two 3xMW armies. Only one iron on the continent, and nobody had it hooked up (fell to me as a result of the Zulu attack, though, naturally ), so the age of the MW was prolonged greatly and I'm in no rush to get MT.

Next up is Carthage, back to the north, but I'm waiting on MT for that.