My cities are small, tipps needed, please help

[Arrian]

Cumi,

Luxuries are the key to the game. Seriously. When I fight wars, they are my objectives... all else is secondary.

There are two things you should try to do:

1) accumulate as many types of luxuries as possible (furs, wines, etc.). It is best to control them yourself, but you should also trade for them (if the price isn't outrageous).

2) try hard to get monopolies on luxuries. If you have all the wines in the world, any civ that wants wines has to get them from you. Gaining several luxury monopolies puts you in a powerful trading position.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Hear Hear!!

Early game: Get 3 luxuries for an 8-12 town empire, and you're off to the races.

Mid and late game: With Marketplaces, 7-8 luxuries, and at least one monopoly, any and every strategy is possible, and all the negative game functions that people complain about, whether warmonger vs. builder, unhappiness, corruption / waste, war weariness, lack of gold, lack of techs, lack of units, and yes, even culture flipping... just aren't much of an issue anymore.

As I've said about killer AI civ development, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As the human player, make sure you're in the first category... GET LUXURIES!!

[Catt]

hr_oskar - excellent, informative post Just wanted to chime in with one correction and some thoughts on how to take full advantage of the correction:

Originally posted by hr_oskar
d) Both you and the AI can only trade surplus resources, whether luxury and strategic; that means they, or you, must have more than one

Although I have never seen the AI willing to part with a sole source of any resource, I have done so willingly on many occasions. The sole source will show up in your trading screen as, for example, "Gems (0 extra)" but you can still click it to put it on the trading table. So how is it helpful?

Trading your sole source of a resource (especially a luxury) can be an excellent tactic to help you keep you in the game at the higher levels, or, for that matter, anytime you're the small fry among bigger AIs. Luxuries are particularly powerful because you can often trade your last luxury resource without suffering the happiness hit of losing a luxury.

Anytime you find yourself out-expanded by the AI, pay careful attention to empire sizes and empire needs. It is widely stated/believed that the AI values luxuries by determining how many happy faces a luxury will generate for a civ (and all my gameplay experience shows agreement with this assumed state of affairs). This luxury valuation model is the reason why, when you are the biggest civ, and already control 4 luxuries, and have marketplaces in many of your cities, a smallish, backward AI will demand from you 3 luxuries, a technology, your map and a lot of gold for his one excess gem -- that gem is going to generate a lot of happy faces for you, but your luxuries are not going to generate even 1/5th of the number of happy faces for the AI. But the luxury valuation model also works in your favor when you're the smaller, perhaps backward civ.

In most Deity and Emperor games, where I am pretty much always small and backward for a good chunk of the early game, I can trade away my luxuries for luxuries and techs, gold, etc. For example, say I control only 1 incense. I can trade my sole incense to the AI kingpin for a gem, a technology and some gold. The AI derives a lot more happy faces from my incense than I do from his gem and he is willing to pay extra for it. I have traded my sole luxury, but got a different luxury back (my people derive the exact same happiness from gems as from incense). And if the deal is broken for some reason, I get my incense back - so I have not lost any happiness but have gained a tech or other goodies. And I can continue this every 20 turns so long as another AI is larger than me. There's no reason this tactic can't work on any difficulty level - it just depends on you being smaller than another civ.

Certainly not a game-changing strategy, but a nice tactical arrow to keep in your quiver.

[Az]

Luxuries are the key to the game

'nuff said. Sprawling is important for the score , but nothing keeps your Democracy running after a 25 turn long war , like some gems and spices.

[cumi]

Thank you for your good advices. I started a new Warlord game (later will try Regent) and it is going much much better. My cities are over 20 and crazily happy, because I am buying all the luxuries.

Now it's clear the use of luxuries. Before I thought, that if I have 5 tiles of wines it is enough to make my people happy. This was a terrible mistake.

cheers

[Panag]

hi ,

Cumi , could you post a save ones in a while , this would be usefull (!)

try to get bonus grassland , if you have jungle , cut it down , save the bonus grassland , reforest the regular grassland , .....

if you have jungle that is next to a lake or sea , build there , with a harbor you have two food then , ....

build the marketplace , look in the FAQ at this site , ....

have a nice day