Give me some tips on my current game.

[trickey]

OK, I am playing as the Vikings. I started off on the tip of a pinninsula on a huge continent. Spain is direcly to my north. France is to the east of me, but there is a fairly large body of water separating us. England is too teh northeast of Spain. Carthage and Egypt are too the Northwest of England.


I had a small 5-6 turn war with Spain, and managed to grab a few cities out of it. I have just managed to make a palace jump to a more central location.

I was doing fine, but now I am finding my self 2-3 techs behind most civs, and loosing gpt.

I am sure I will have to attack Spain again sometime soon. Should I attack now (Swordsmen) or should I wait 3-4 techs and attack with berzerks?

Also, do you think I should prioritize libraries since I am slowly starting to fall back in techs?


EDIT :Forgot to say, im playing on Monarch.

[CerberusIV]

OK, I usually play Regent/Monarch on standard maps so take that into account with my opinion.

Criticisms first - The Vikings are militaristic and get cheap barracks. You don't seem to have built any but you will need veteran units for an effective war. That will lead to more elites and the possibility of a leader.

The palace jump must have cost you. IIRC one more city would allow you to have built the FP in Oslo (using the palace for a pre-build).

Your city placements are not good - too much overlap. Expect cities on grassland to grow to size 12 so leave enough space. Oslo is being strangled by the surrounding cities.

You don't have enough workers. To get infrastructure up will take two workers per three cities (two captured workers = one home grown). Mine more grassland.

You have too many swordsmen and not enough horsemen. Fast units can retreat and survive. Also you will be at war with the Spanish again soon and need to be able to raid in and pillage their iron and horses

What you can do - trade! I played the next two turns and managed to trade for some territory maps and got communications with the 4 civs you haven't contacted yet. I also got currency off the Indians. Build marketplaces first so they will then pay for libraries. I then sold communications to other civs as widely as possible and got my treasury up to about 130 gold. Set the luxury slider to 0% - you are in despotism so 2 military per city. Set the governor in Oslo to manage citizen moods in all cities and you won't get any revolts, just a little starvation. Cut down the forests around Oslo to build improvements in the city. You can research Republic at minus 5GP in 16 turns and still have something left in the treasury.

Build to marketplaces and more units then ELIMINATE the Spanish! After that stabilise and work on trading tech and maps and look for a likely victim for amphibious assaults from Berserks after Astronomy. Berserks don't work too well on land against Knights.

Feel free to ignore this if you don't like it, it is simply how I would have played in your position. Good Luck

[trickey]

Thanks for the input, i seem to be having trouble placing my cities. They are either too far apart or too close together

ps. I know one more city would have let me build the FP, but i was planning on taking out the Spanish and putting down a FP there.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by trickey
Thanks for the input, i seem to be having trouble placing my cities. They are either too far apart or too close together

ps. I know one more city would have let me build the FP, but i was planning on taking out the Spanish and putting down a FP there.

I don't usually Palace jump but I suspect it is better to get the FP up first so you benefit from having both and then jump, probably to somewhere that is currently English territory in your case.

[Theseus]

I took a quick look... I agree that you should be focused more on marketplaces and further warfare. I noticed the ability to trade communications too.

Your city placement is OK, IMHO. You need to use your workers more effectively.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Theseus
Your city placement is OK, IMHO. You need to use your workers more effectively.

I should have been more explicit. I don't think the city placement here is bad, rather that it could be better. Oslo can be sorted by improving other tiles so the surrounding cities are working tiles outside Oslo's city radius.

I probably also unfairly applied the strategy I usually implement to someone else's game.

I take the view that my early cities will be the best placed I will get in the whole game (ever seen the AI setle a city on tundra and pick the only tile around with game on it to found the city on?). I take a long term view that these cities will have most of the city improvements and that I will build hospitals in five of them once I discover Sanitation. This is to allow Battlefield Medicine. I don't build hospitals anywhere else until I can also build mass transit. This limits pollution as size 12 cities don't produce any population related pollution. To follow this strategy I earmark the five potential metropolis sized cities as I settle them and try to ensure minimal overlap with other cities.

I pack other cities, particularly border cities, much closer together.

This strategy does need to be modified if you don't have much initial room and may also need modification on larger map sizes where palace jumps are more important.