Help needed - no iron or gunpowder!

[Laertes]

Monarch, huge map, raging, 8 civs, random everything else.

I am the CHinese, leading in population. Sitting on a huge peninsula connected to a large continent by a narrow strip of mountains, which I have blocked with a couple of cities.

I have pretty good land, lots of rivers, grass and hills, with a couple of luxuries. I have a lot of ice north of me, which I am slowly colonising in case any oil turns up.

I have about 21 cities, of which 6 are at size 12 and the most of the rest are going that way rapidly.

But I have no iron or gunpowder.

I am a couple of techs behind everybody, (Just discovered Republic / Feudalism / Theology) but doing OK on wonders. Got HG, Pyramids, Sistine, Sun Tzu.

The French are the other side of the mountains, and they are quite big, and have iron and probably gunpowder. Didnt check last night before I switched off.

Also on my continent, but a long way from me, are the Greeks, who declared war on me but have not showed up, and the English. The Romans are on a large island some distance away from me, and also declared war, but have just got some triremes wandering around at the moment.

Any thoughts on what to do. Unless "we discover a new source of gunpowder", I am whacked for war for some considerable time. How do I go about winning by other means (I have turned cultural victory off). Which is my most likely route, or am I doomed.

If I can trade for gunpowder, is it worth it, or will the deal get cancelled after 20 turns? How much should I pay (I have not done much resource trading before?

Suggestions welcome

[jshelr]

Panic not. Pikes and longbows. Build the economy. Trade if it's reasonable. Tech more important for you than gunpowder, at least until cavs. You should win the end game if you get there in one piece. Iron may be a problem as RR become available, but you can get by until then.

[jabberwockysr]

Ouch. That's exactly what I try to do to the AI...

It would definitely be worthwhile trading for saltpeter. I'd be willing to trade 2 luxs or a tech, how much gpt depends on your economy.

If you can't trade:
Try to stay at peace as much as you can during the middle ages and go for nationalism as your first Industrial tech.
Build up a defense of some sort against sea invasion, but that depends on your coastline
If you manage to get a tech lead, you can probably keep them happy with you by selling techs for less than what they're willing to pay.


Other than that, try to build a strong production and research economy to go for the SS win.

jshelr: No iron = No Pikes

[Harovan]

A Longbowman + a Pikeman would be some kind of a slow Knight with double upkeep and no retreat, but... unfortunately do Pikemen also require iron.

If you can, try to send some Spearmen and Archers/Longbowmen to fool and divert eventually attacking Greeks and make peace ASAP. Concentrate on building up your empire. Your industrious workers and city improvements are the key. Do you already have a FP? If not, it's about time. Try to sell luxuries to others. Settle the tundra ASAP or the AI will. Trust me, they will find your oil, so hurry up!

At your place, I would either stay peaceful and go for a diplomatic victory, or warmonger later when you have Infantry/Artillery, or even Tanks.

[jshelr]

No iron = no pikes.

LoL -- shows how much time I spend on defense I guess!!

[Laertes]

Thanks for the tips (I'm still searching the build list for pikemen!) Will be patient.

[Harovan]

FH: You can't build pikemen once you have no iron. You won't find them in the list.

[Fredric Drum]

Just had a game like that.. no iron, no horses, no saltpeter on my continent (decent sized one too). Wiped out the other civs using mostly lots of archers (they didn't have iron either) and managed to buy some iron finishing off the Babylonians with swordsmen... then everything was quiet, very quiet, for hundreds of years.

If you manage to remove the other civs from your territory you know you'll be safe, as the AI is incapable of invading anything. You can go for a builder/researcher strategy, and if you feel like conquering, you could always (well, often) buy horses and iron/saltpeter. You're NOT screwed just because you start on a bad continent.

Oh, I lost that game on culture... still pretty happy about my performance

[LionQ]

[SIZE=1]or warmonger later when you have Infantry/Artillery, or even Tanks.

That's exactly what you have to do. Maybe it's a sorry for you, but you can't have MedievalWarfare. Wait for Rifleman.
So, put everthing you can in to resaerch as quick as possible, so you fast done with the MiddleAges and you can start with the IndustrialAges. There's a whole new kind of warfare to discover there, without Iron and Salpeter.

But by the time you get to the IndustrialAge, make sure you DO have Iron then, or RailRoads will become a very huge probleme.....

[XOR]

You have 2 choices if you want to be a cheap guy:

1- Buy Iron, this will allow you to build your Chinese UU (and upgrade charriots and horsemen to riders) and invade some poor sucker that might have gunpowder. It will also allow you to build pikemen and upgrade spearmen to pikemen. Have you had your Golden Age yet?

- Buy Gunpowder, this will allow you to build musketeers, a city with 4 veteran fortified musketeers can be difficult to capture for knights and longbows (current era's attack unit) especially if you have siege units in the city, remember to bombard them as the station next to your city, then they will get autobombarded again in their turn when they assault the city.

Man, you're fine, I've had it worse: I've been 1 on 1 (being the last remaining 2 civs) and the only other civ, the last one, was the single largest continent (ocupying all of it) and it had ALL the Rubber. I managed trough severe bombing runs and massive artillery shelling combined with massive cavalries until I capped some rubber and upgraded riflemen and built tanks.

[LionQ]

Originally posted by XOR
You have 2 choices if you want to be a cheap guy:

1- Buy Iron, this will allow you to build your Chinese UU (and upgrade charriots and horsemen to riders) and invade some poor sucker that might have gunpowder. It will also allow you to build pikemen and upgrade spearmen to pikemen. Have you had your Golden Age yet?

- Buy Gunpowder, this will allow you to build musketeers, a city with 4 veteran fortified musketeers can be difficult to capture for knights and longbows (current era's attack unit) especially if you have siege units in the city, remember to bombard them as the station next to your city, then they will get autobombarded again in their turn when they assault the city.

Great plan, yes, this is what you have to do! Buy it! Maybe it's gonna be expensive, but you can get that back with conquering.

[Laertes]

Update

Managed to trade iron for 20 glorious turns, and built as many Riders as I could, as well as upgrading to Pikemen.

Unfortunately, as my near negihbours are the French with monsieur le Musket, I am not hopeful of making much progress with 20 Riders and Longbowmen.

Nobody will trade Iron or gunpowder anymore.

I am narrowing the tech deficit, am in Democracy, have had my GA. when I finished last night I was 2 techs away from the modern age but I see Babylon has some Riflemen already.

If I dont need iron or saltpetre for tanks etc, I should be able to hold on long enough (assuming I find oil, rubber etc!!)

Bye for now

[Raghnall]

I've had similar situations.

The key behind Longbowmen is ... numbers.

MASS numbers to be more exact.

They can take out Musketmen and Musketeers. Heck, If you have enough of them, they can take out riflemen. The key is to be prepared to lose > 1 (like 2 or 3) to take out 1 defender.

Since the longbowmen are comparatively cheaper than the riflemen/musketmen(teers), you shouldn't have much problem going on the offensive. Of course playing Monarch, you're already handicapped, so you might only wind up breaking even.

A warning however, is that if you see Riflemen, that means the AI can mobilize. You could be soon swamped, so I'd only try the longbowmen attack if you are able to get enough cities in 1 turn to cripple (at least impede) the economy of the AI you're attacking.

[XOR]

The thing is, if you intend to go to war you must be willing to create 1 or 2 stacks of 16+ units and keep building them at faster speed than you lose them. You also have to know that you need to try to capture all their cities as fast as possible before they start flipping.

BTW, I dont sign peace treaties anymore unless war weariness forces me to. I used to sign peace in exchange for luxuries, but now you cant, so I dont, I get no other option but to conquer further to get my luxuries. Bah!

[Bella Hella]

yeah, sometimes you just gotta wait for riflemen.

regarding the other civs who won't trade resources anymore - do you have the "always renegotiate deals" option checked??? this is REEEEEAAALLY useful. when the deal expires, the AI will pop up to renegotiate with you. this means that you immediately buy the resource again, and the AI doesn't have the chance to sell to someone else. it's also good for those of us who forget what we're trading. another great thing about it is this - i was buying wines form the french at 24 per turn. joan popped up and asked me if i wanted to continue. i could have said "yes, sounds good to me" or whatever, but instead i hit "i would like to propose a deal." STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. i thought maybe i could squeeze more out of her, and i wanted to talk techs. instead, the screen chaged to "they would never accept such a deal!!!!!" i could have kept paying 24 per turn for the wine, but instead i ended up paying a lot more. it wasn't that big a deal since i was making a lot of money and gave her a lump sum, but still.