Ultimate Power

[Catt]

Originally posted by alexman
Actually, the road bonus is included in the 4 commerce minimum. I think the extra commerce must come from the Republic/Democracy bonus.

Good call! I didn't catch the "minimum" concept squarely.

[Arrian]

As per our discussion in the "Monarchy vs. Republic" thread, I have attached the 1275AD saved game for Lockstep. f3 stats:

142 units (29 workers, 1 settler), 166 allowed. Most of them are defenders (1 per city)

At this stage, I was in a somewhat "builder" mindset, as is reflected by what my cities are building.

But the real heavy lifting in terms of city improvements was done during my golden age a few centuries earlier. Unfortunately, I don't have that save here at home... I think it's on my gf's computer.

-Arrian

[Worthingtons]

Interesting Thread here. The Great Leaders stratagy clearly made a telling difference here. A few people may remember about 2 months ago a game where i got 20 great leaders from a game with the Romans , which i did not even finish (tedium!).....

In that game I remember building the Heroic epic early on... i was in Monarchy too. The fact other areas of my areas of my empire suffered early on was insignificant, I got generally every wonder i needed and after military tradition I was making a mess of the oposition with my armies.

[vondrack]

Very impressive, Arrian!

I played a similar (though definitely not THAT great) game with the Japanese on Regent about three weeks ago. Just that my continent seemed big enough for me, so I never invaded overseas... I ended up having almost everything in every city of mine... few 30+ cities, lots of 20+ ones... That was perhaps my last Regent game ever. After finishing it I decided it was time to move on and try Monarch.

[des-esseintes]

It's when people start games like this that you sigh in relief that MP is just around the corner.

[Solid74]

sigh...

I dont know how you guys do it, this game is the most frustrating game I have ever played. I read all your tips and strats, yet I cant even come close no matter how hard I try. You all talk about things like getting leaders and the HE way early, like 1000 BC, and getting the FP early too, and things like having massive armies before 1 AD to crush the enemy with. Where does all this come from? I just dont get it. I even play China for industry and military... Im playing on EASY for christ's sake. WTF? I try and try, never ever get leaders before 1 AD even though I am at constant war early on to try to get them. I Guess it all starts with that, so I am lost. The computer civs always get to strong for me to defeat, and Im not talking about total domination... Im talking about trying to beat 1 neighbor early on, like is talked about in countless stratagies here, so things like the HE and golden age become possible early.

Im just frustrated as hell..... it seems like you all are playing a different game than me. I doubt this will even get read, these posts are kinda old.
Felt good to vent tho...

[Tall Stranger]

Solid74,

Sorry to hear that you're having troubles. Rest assured, however, that there are a lot of very good players here who can help you improve your game.

Without a better sense of how you play, I can only make a few suggestions (forgive me if you know these already):

You said that one of your problems is that you do not generate GLs. The creation of great leaders is purely random (i.e. there is nothing you can do to make it 100% certain you'll get a GL), but there are things you can do to improve your odds. You should understand that only elite units can generate GLs. Each time an elite unit wins a battle, it has a 1 in 16 chance of generating a GL. (Chance improves to 1 in 12 if you have built the HE.) Thus, the more elites you have, the better your chances of a GL are.

The quickest way to get lots of elite units is to make sure all your units are built in cities with barracks. This ensure that they will all be veteran units. Veterans (in militaristic civs) have a 1 in 4 chance of being promoted to elites if they win a battle. The logic flow is:

lots of veterans --> lots of elites --> GL

Understanding this, you need to think carefully about how to use your elites when fighting a battle. If you have a choice between using, say, a vet archer or an elite archer against a regular warrior on a plain, use the elite and maybe you'll get lucky. If I need a GL, I will often use vet units to significantly weaken an adversary's city, then use the elite units in my stack to kill off the wounded defenders and increase my chances of a GL.

Now, for the other problem you mention, namely not being able to defeat a single neighbor. Not knowing more about your situation, I can only guess that you're not fielding enough units to overwhelm the adversary. Often, new players underestimate how many units they really need for an attack, or declare war without a definite target in mind. Are all (or at least most) of your cities cranking out mil units? Do you have specific cities you're trying to seize, or is the war sort of haphazard?

Let me use my current game as an example. I'm the Ottomans fighting the French and at the outset of the war I had 6 cities. To attack the French, I set all but one of my cities to produce either spearmen or archers, and assembled a strike force of 2 spears and 6 archers for the initial attack, with another 3 archers on the way to the front. My plan was to station one of the spears and all injured archers in the city I seized, while using the other to escort all healthy archers and the new arrivals to the next target city.

I don't know if the advice above did much for you, so let me make one other recommendation: post a save and ask for help. You'll find that there are many people here more than willing to give you pointers on your game.

Good luck.

[Theseus]

Solid, no problemo... We have helped a lot of players get over whatever hurdles they need to.

In addition to focusing on some of the threads about the early game, try posting a save from around 1000AD. Constructive criticism goes a loooong way.

[Arrian]

Most of the time, when people new to the game are having trouble on the lower levels, it comes down to lack of developing their terrain, poor city spacing (and I'm not even talking about the 3-tile vs. 4-tiles... I've seen games with cities 6-7 tiles apart ), and not fully understanding what the sliders (tech/tax/luxury) can do for you. Oh, and mass upgrading, too.

Most newbies don't build NEARLY enough workers. In fact, most newbies (and this includes me early on) really don't understand how important growth is. To quote notyoueither: "Pop is power." Hand-in-hand with growth, of course, is happiness. Rioting cities are often the reason newbies don't like to growt their cities as fast as possible. However, once you master the use of the luxury slider to keep your cities from rioting, you can grow them big early, and overpower the AI, which doesn't use the luxury slider (it does a little, I think, but only for war weariness, which comes later in the game, and then only to like 10%).

Wide city spacing is another thing that has been proven to be, um, not optimal. As much as I dislike it, placing cities such that their full radii overlap is the way to go. Some do it more than others... many of the best players are down to 3-tile placement (city-x-x-city). I stubbornly stick to 4-tile, but I recognize that it's not optimal.

Mass upgrading: shields are harder to come by than gold, especially once you realize that you can research a tech at 40-turn pace (90% tax, 10% science) and, if you work it right, sell that tech for several others + cash (polytheism tends to work that way). This can get you a sizeable treasury early in the game. Yet you still aren't pumping out too many shields. Thus, it makes sense to build lots of "inferior" units like warriors or chariots and then upgrade them en masse to swordsmen or horsemen. This turns money into shields, at a relatively efficient rate. It can allow you to muster a lot more firepower than the AI can easily counter.

Ok, that's the end of my yapping for now (gotta go home, yippee!).

-Arrian

[Zero]

When I was a newb, I didnt trade much with the AI. Now I check almost every turn for possible trades....

also stack ur units and dont let them diverge. If ur attacking AIs with one unit and you let them stand there unprotected, AI can counter attack you and kill ur unit.

Thats all I the beginners advice I can think of...

[sabrewolf]

Solid74,

well, i'm not half as good as the most in the strategy forum, but here some of the things that can help:

- don't immediatly trade techs others have to offer (except if you really need it like knowing where resources are). techs get cheaper, the more civilizations know it. alternatively, you can buy the tech expensively from one civ and sell it to all others. the problem hereby is that most AI civs don't have much cash around early on (they tend to keep tax/science fairly even)

- buy early workers from the AI. as arrian said, growth is the key to success. getting their workers will help you (complete your tile improvements faster or enlarge your cities) and harm them (they need to build it again and have a pop-point less now)

- exploit the AI weaknesses. don't immedaitly attack cities. declare war and have some units between your and the AIs empire somewhere on hills or mountains. the AI will attack you, strengthen your units (through promotions) and weaken his

- research techs the AI doesn't go for so soon. writing is the best if you start off with a commercial civ. mathematics, currency, polytheism are other similar techs. don't research, what you can buy from the others.

- micromanagement
-- cities: e.g. if your city only needs 1 more food to grow, then you may want to set a city worker to another spot (e.g. a forrest tile instead of grassland) for the extra shields
-- worker actions: chopping down a forrest with an industrial worker takes 5 turns. so 2 workers need 3 turns (2,5 rounded up), 3 workers 2 turns (1,67 rounded up) and 4 workers still need 2 turns (1,25 rounded up). more extreme for non-industrial civs or when using slaves.
-- tech-slider. if you're just 1 turn away from getting the next tech, try lowering the tech rate. mostly you can reduce it several positions and still be finished in the next turn.

- don't start settlers too early. if you build a settler when your city is just size 3, it'll have to grow again past 1 and 2. if you build the settler at size 6, you continue with a size 4 (or 5 if you time it perfectly) city and have a lot more shields for other stuff (e.g. temples, barracks, other units). this is an important point and one of the key issues even on higher levels. read threads talking about "settler factories" for more details.

- calculate or estimate battle outcome odds. you'll see that sometimes it's better to stay back and let the enemy come front.

- DON'T send single units one after the other. a defender usually has an advantage at 1vs1 and if there is more than one defender, he can heal while the other one defends. all you can do by sending one after the other is hope for a lucky punch.

there are a lot more tricks which you'll figure out yourself or read here in the forums.

several things i still haven't mastered.
e.g. i'm an absolute zero in rushing (early warfare), because i don't dare to not grow or not build improvements).
i still don't trade enough. i kind of dislike the idea of giving the techs away too cheap.

good luck!

[sabrewolf]

wow, what a long post shouldn't this lenght give +5
compared to the spammers in other forums (DGs, community, etc.) the strategy forum posts are in average a hundred times longer

[Cookie Monster]

- buy early workers from the AI. as arrian said, growth is the key to success. getting their workers will help you (complete your tile improvements faster or enlarge your cities) and harm them (they need to build it again and have a pop-point less now)

Does the Ai still hate you for having their workers doing slave work for you regardless of how you aquired them? (PTW 1.27f of course)


Just one small bit of advice. When attacking group your troops in large stacks (6-10units) then attack. The way combat works in this game is victory favors the one who attacks with overwhelming force.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Cookie Monster
Does the Ai still hate you for having their workers doing slave work for you regardless of how you aquired them? (PTW 1.27f of course)

Yes, see the thread on Attitudes by Bamspeedy. I forget if it is here or at CFC or both.

[Arrian]

No, apparently not. I remember somebody from Firaxis saying that the AI hating you for having slaves of theirs wasn't even in the game, actually, that it was a myth. I do not, however, have a link to that post. I'm going on memory.

I still buy workers, even at the increased cost. I often use tech to do it, actually. Depending on how early you get 'em, it can be very powerful.

Sound advice re: concentration of force. Exact numbers are difficult to gauge, though, because "overwhelming force" in 2000bc on a standard map on regent is different than it is in 500bc on a huge on emperor, you know?

And overwhelming force takes time to create. I've grown to love early archer warfare to disrupt the AI and take shots at getting leaders. It only requires a few archers to take down settler teams and kill incoming AI units. No need to take cities. Just kill units and grab slaves. And if you get lucky, you might find yourself in possession of the Pyramids in 1000bc. I think I'm addicted to that, actually... it's getting bad.

-Arrian