I -AM- Desperate

[Dry]

Re: Re: I -AM- Desperate

Originally posted by Kloreep
Stack enough of these and a 20-shield spearman can easily face a 70-shield Knight or 40-shield Med Infantry on even ground. A fortified spearman inside a walled town, with the attacker crossing the river, will be at 4 defense. A fortified spearman on a mountain will be stronger than a knight, at 4.5 defense.

Well, to be honest, that's where the AI does cheat.
When you move to a tile with no MP left, you cannot fortify, so you do NOT get the defense bonus.
The AI receives the defense bonus, fortified or not!

[gunkulator]

Do you mean the terrain or fortified bonus? You and the AI always get a terrain bonus. But AFAIK, the AI does not get the fortify bonus if it did not fortify.
If someone knows differently, please tell me.

[Jon Shafer]

Re: Re: Re: I -AM- Desperate

Originally posted by Dry
Well, to be honest, that's where the AI does cheat.
When you move to a tile with no MP left, you cannot fortify, so you do NOT get the defense bonus.
The AI receives the defense bonus, fortified or not!

This is not true.

[vmxa1]

mikepalomino if you find you are not able to build wonders or keep up in tech research, it is a certainty that it is a function of
how the empire was built.

Every time I have seen this complaint, it is an empire that has sparsely build cities. The cities are far apart, have few tiles with roads and not many mines.

Often the workers are wasting turns working on hills and mountain tiles that are not going to be worked for some time.

One common trait is that they have too few workers and do not ensure that citizens are working the correct tiles and those tiles have all the improvements that they should.

You tend to see too many irrigated tile, often thoses cities are making way too much food and are not building settlers or workers.

One other thing I have seen in these games many times is that, they will have citizens as entertainers and not use the lux slider.

Now it is true that you can get a very poor start location and not be able to prosper, but the ones I see are not due to bad land, it is bad management of their land.

As to combat, after years of CivIII, you just come to understand that crap happens. You just build enough troops to do the job or come with superior units.

Having one spear to defend against any attacker is a very very risky proposition. I would not want to rely on even a pike in that spot.

You want to have more units than they attacker to be safe. If you have many bombardment units to back yours, it is much better.

If you have have cities at no more than CxxC, you can send another unit over to back up that spear. You saw the archer coming in time. If you are CxxxC or even more tiles apart, it will be hard to get help in time.

[Shr3dZ]

Originally posted by Modo44

The point is to sell one technology for many other techs. Learn which ones the AI won't be likely to research and get them.

How about you just tell us which ones the AI doesnt go for? Ive been playing a long time and I still dont know. I usually streak to philo, grab liter and finish the GL. From what Ive read, ppl perfer going for map making for free... why? just b/c it takes 3 extra turns to research? or do ppl actually like the lighthuose? hmm

Another thing, you mention selling one tech for multiple techs, how the hell can anyone do that unless its obvious like monarchy for wheel and warrior code. trading to me seems fairly boring, the AI always think THEIR stuff is WAY better then MY stuff. Its always 2 of my luxuries for 1 or even .75 of theirs, i might have to throw in some coin too.

I agree with the thread starter that sometimes the AI get way too lucky with usually a couple attacks in a row.

Heres the link to the 'jump' thread. If you do the things Ive listed you should have the lead in tech,money etc in no time:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123812

[vmxa1]

Just a guess, but maybe the reason to select Map is due to game settings.

If you are playing a level like Emp and have lots of water, you may go for Map. The AI will want it bad and will not be in a rush to get Lit. So you still have a shot at Lit and can trade Map.

The GL is not so useful in a game where you do not expect to be behind the AI in tech. The higher the level, the more useful it is and at low levels, it can do nothing for you. Also in an island map, you won't have contacts, so you could not gain tech from the GL, until later.

You will still need to research hard as no one will have any tech to trade.

If you are contacting the civs routinely, you can see what they are researching and see the patterns. You can use the knowledge of the beaker cost to detect break throughs. With all of those things, you soon have an idea of what they are doing.

You also see the AI loves to head for Map and Facism among other techs.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
Another thing, you mention selling one tech for multiple techs, how the hell can anyone do that unless its obvious like monarchy for wheel and warrior code.

Let's say you discover Literature. You contact the Persians and trade Literature for Iron Working. *On the Same Turn* you contact the Babylonians and trade Literature for Polytheism. Also on the same turn, you contact the Americans and trade Literature for Horseback Riding. Viola! You just traded 1 tech for 3. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Sure your tech was a better tech than any one of them, but it surely was worth 3 lower level techs.

A couple points: You need to make contact with as many civs as possible as early as possible. You want to do all the trading during your turn (when you initiate contact) and on the same turn. That way the AI won't have a chance to trade techs amongst themselves before you get in on the deal.

[vmxa1]

I would think that you got LIt for the GL and have a prebuild going. In that case, you may not want to trade Lit around for those junk techs. You will get them from the GL anyway.

[Solomwi]

Gain six luxuries.

Beautiful, T. The more I think about it, the more its sheer beauty comes through. Setting a six-luxury goal absolutely affects every facet of gameplay, from early expansion to when to fight to keeping infrastructure up with expansion.

[Shr3dZ]

Doh, good points about trading 1 tech for multiples. Yea, I truely should do that more often. And now it becomes more clear why you would want to contact as many civs as possible. I think I got into the ahbit of not doing this b/c most of the time Im behind in tech, and trading just isnt an option...

The GL is not so useful in a game where you do not expect to be behind the AI in tech.

The only exception I can think of is that you gain so much money while your tech is at 0%, and then upgrading all spearman at once can easily be afforded.

Also in an island map, you won't have contacts, so you could not gain tech from the GL, until later.

This reminds me of one time (at band camp) I had VERY limited contact with other civs, maybe 1 or 2... anyways, the rest of the civs had already learned a couple techs past edu-maction and then what happened was I traded for contact with a new civ, and from them i traded for contact with another new civ, i did that like 6 times, then on the next turn I learned all the techs up to and even beyond education! i think i got chemisty and printing and something else... kinda cool ~ my point was that even if you have limited contact, the GL can still be useful b/c it doesnt expire until YOU have learned education (possible not true anymore with the new patches).

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Solomwi


Beautiful, T. The more I think about it, the more its sheer beauty comes through. Setting a six-luxury goal absolutely affects every facet of gameplay, from early expansion to when to fight to keeping infrastructure up with expansion.

Thanks for noticing, Solomonwi.

The more I think about it, as well, the more I think that simple overarching goals like this might be great game teaching tools, applicable to so many different things. Notice, for instance, that I said "gain"... that might mean trade, just as well as territorial acquisition. Thus, the concept is applicable across so many different game strats (e.g., warmonger, builder, OCC, 5CC, etc.), on top of the impacts in terms of economic and military development.

I'm really pumped by the idea of considering the game from this kind of perspective, and teaching it to newer players... go beyond mechanics, tactics, and even game-specific strategy, and get to the 'backwards logical thinking' of "If I want to accomplish X and Y and Z, what are my A and B and C first??!!"

To give further credit where it's due, I'd also like to thank (in perhaps date order) Velociryx, Aeson, Dominae, Catt, nbarclay, vmxa1, Trip, and Fried-Psitalon, ALL, and among many others, for helping me over time continue think about the metagame this way.

(ps: And I hope that we'll always have vxma1 and others around to walk people through the basics!! )

[LibreHistoria]

By Jove! I think I [almost] got it!

Hey folks,

Thanks again for all the great advice. Here's an update:

I started a game with default map settings, Monarch, with four random civs. I chose the French (Vive La France!)

Well I have to say the one tip that really came in handy was about roads and over-irrigation. I realize now that I've been over-irrigating my tiles, even grasslands. Furthermore, I was wasting valuable time mining mountains in the early stages.

As soon as I focused my work on building roads, and occassionally some irrigation for towns on or near desert squares, I began to notice that the gap between the AI and I was narrowed.

The game was fairly successful, but next time I'll put one more AI. I shared one continent with the Mongols and the Celts, and on the other main continent were the Japanese and the Portugese. The Portugese were wiped out by the 1300s, and Japan basically became the dominant civ.

Unfortunately, by the time the 1900s rolled around the Japanese must have won culturally because I was given a "You have Suffered a Humiliating Cultural Defeat" message, and the game was over.

What I liked about this game was that I was able to hold my own even if I was slightly behind the curve.

Still, I either dropped the ball on Wonders, or I need to make a stronger effort to beat the AI in building them. I didn't build one wonder in the entire game, with the exception of small wonders like The Pentagon, Wall Street, and the Military Academy.

I suppose I should consider myself fortunate too because I was positioned in an area that had abundant resources such as Iron, horses, rubber, and salt peter.

Over all though the best game I've had at this level.

Thanks again everyone.

Mike

[Shr3dZ]

Glad to hear it Mike, same thing happened to me last week or so... all I had to do was read some of the key ideas/strategies and it changed my game forever.

Like you, I no longer waste time on mountains and hills early, and I irrigate a whole lot less overall.

[nbarclay]

With regard to tile improvements, my goal tends to be to have the tiles I'm actually going to be working improved just before I'm ready to start working them. (In the very early stages while I still just have one worker, I often fall a bit behind, but I try to balance my number of workers against my growth so that most of the time my workers can keep up.) Improving tiles I won't be working in the near future - other than building roads between cities - is a waste of workers' time that could be spent better doing other things, while working unimproved tiles carries a significant cost in lost potential for food, shields, and/or commerce.

A good rule of thumb for tile improvements is that every plains tile should be roaded and irrigated and every grassland tile should be roaded and mined. There are cases where irrigating grasslands is useful to work extra hills and/or mountains (or forests if you leave any unchopped) or where mining plains is useful to balance out a food surplus to get more production (especially once cities reach size 12), but if you normally follow the rule of thumb and only depart from it when you're clear on the reason, you should be in good shape.

You might also consider taking the time to micromanage which tiles your city laborers work in the early game, especially if your starting position has a food bonus. Under those conditions, a combination of good use of the luxury slider and managing laborers to focus more on food and less on production can pay enormous dividends.

Regarding the combat system, I think a lot of what's going on is an illusion based on tricks of memory. If you remember the times when unusual results worked against you more strongly and vividly than you do the times when unusual results worked in your favor, it's easy to get the feeling that the combat system is rigged. But the reality is that the system just has a relatively high degree of randomness, resulting in relatively large numbers of "abnormal" outcomes in both directions. Personally, for the most part, I like that randomness becaues it makes the game less predictable and hence a bit more challenging. Bad luck can be a bit frustrating at times, but overall, in my view, the good outweighs the bad.

Nathan

[vmxa1]

Hear hear.