OK, it's me again. Trying to win on Monarch without the Romans. Map setting is monarch/big-small/nospacerace/aggAi/monarch/standardsize/epic/10civs/notechbrokering

And to make it worse, I am once again trying with Tokogawa. There is just something juicy about gunpowder units with combat1/drill1/CG plus whatever promos you get from exp.
I will explore a bit before settling a new city. And yes i reloaded a few times (LOL, like 10).
tech path will be
mining>BW and not sure after that. Probably Ag or AH

please help LOL. and how the heck do I get images to appear in the window? I went to photo bucket and uploaded it there...but then it just made me crazy

OK, good news and bad news. Good news is I popped Sailing AND BW from huts. Bad news is there is no copper close by and my warrior is Purina Lion Chow. I am thinking where the warrior is standing in the first pic would be a great military city. And another one to the west has nice hills and food. I am currently researching hunting>archery since Sitting Bull is a close neighbor and it will be barbarian-O'clock soon

I see two interesting possibilities for production cities. There's the desert hill, and then there are a couple sites to the east near the lake. I would probably use the lake site (green hills plus cows plus rice) for military production, and use the desert hill for wonders and commerce until the time comes when we need a big navy.

I'll also note that your start looks very slow. Turn 30 and you only have one improved tile? Consider where you would be had you started worker first Worker pops on turn 15, farms the corn (+5F, rather than +4F), then mines the gems and your economy rockets. (Edit: math broken by failing to note the game settings)

You are going to whip that worker out, right?

I'm not sure what sort of "good news" you need beyond "we started with 3 gem resources". Seriously, that effectively drops the difficulty at least a level. Popping Sailing and BW puts the icing on the cake.

Why are you researching Hunting tho'? You've got no squares that need it, you don't really need Animal Handling, and even if you are protective, it's a little early to be going for Archery - you haven't explored enough to see if there's Copper close.

Bh

I'll also note that your start looks very slow. Turn 30 and you only have one improved tile? Consider where you would be had you started worker first Worker pops on turn 15, farms the corn (+5F, rather than +4F), then mines the gems and your economy rockets.

I agree with your conclusions, although I don't think that's how I would have done it. I'd have done the workboat first, but made sure I was using a better hammer square (I'm guessing the 3F square was used - very suboptimal). Getting the workboat out quickly gives faster research and faster worker building (which would be build 2).

Bh

I started the workboat first so I could research mining >BW. By the time I had popped BW, the WB was almost done. I did whip my worker out and began mining the hills. I was researching hunting>archery because with the barbs on the horizon and Sitting Bull as a neighbor I needed to have some defenses in place. Ag then IW are next on the list. I didn't want to gamble on not having iron either.

Oh, epic speed. Sorry, maybe this start isn't as slow as I thought. My bad.

Let's see... the boat is 45 hammers, the Worker 90? So the borders pop after turn 8? At which point you have 16 food and 16 hammers. 9 more turns at 1F+2P gives 25 food and 43 hammers. If you overflow the workboat by one hammer, that gives you five hammers into the worker while the boat is traveling, and then you'll need 17 turns after that to finish it. 35 turns?

Or you can grow for two turns - you "lose" the hammers (they get invested in a barracks, I suppose), and now you are building the worker at 6 per turn, gaining back the two turns you have lost (and leaving yourself in position to whip the worker if you pop BW from a hut :) ).

If you *really* want to get micro, you make sure that you've got one extra food in the bin - it's no worse than one hammer in the barracks, but if you do whip away the second pop you are 8 turns from growing, instead of 9.

I think I'd still rather have the Worker on turn 23 - but in doing so I may be failing to appreciate the advantage of deferring Agriculture.

I was researching hunting>archery because with the barbs on the horizon and Sitting Bull as a neighbor I needed to have some defenses in place.

You haven't explored nearly enough of your surrounding area to have given up on having Copper so quickly. Researching two possible useless techs in the early game like that is a significant disadvantage if it turns out they aren't necessary. You'll likely be able to recover from it thanks to your tech popping and massive gem bonus, but I still think it was a poor choice to make when there were more valuable techs to go after.

Bh

well, since my cowardly warrior died fighting a lion, I would have to delay building the worker to build a new one. With hunting I can build a scout to look around a bit. And protective archers behind walls are not exactly worthless. And most importantly...I am guarenteed to be able to build them. Shortly after I took the screen shot, Stalin wandered by...He is quite close, so I am glad I chose to go the route I did. There is iron but it won't be connected until my third city.
As it stands now, I just researched Bueracracy and machinery and am building samuri. I have a decent science city, my military city is going well, I still haven't researched Lit so no heroic epic. I think it is time to go stab Stalin in the back. He settled over by the east lake and I want that spot !!!! Besides, he is cautious towards me and I think it's time for him to attack me. He has no horsies so I can forgo pikes, though he has elephants, but no construction yet. A few combat2 samuri with their first strike should do well enough for dealing with them. He and I share a religion, but I will be switching to the major block just before i attack. I want his little elephant city as well as the lake city. Though I need to raze it and move it one south. I have delayed attacking him because he had a lot of jungle to clear. Now that he has done the dirty work for me it's time to thank him. He has been in a few wars already so he should have a few settled GG's for me as well. OK, time to go liberate the russians from communist repression.

Don't delay your first worker to replace a dead warrior. You have plenty of time before the barbs show up. Especially since you have those gems for fast research, you definitely have time for agr, min, BW, AH at least before resorting to pursuing archery.

I like a worker first build with this start for 2 reasons ... you have gems, and you can't work a 2 hammer tile until your border pop. I'm not sure what the ideal improvement order is here, but as long as you improve the corn and the gems asap and work them, you are in good shape. Grow to size 5 to work your 5 goodie tiles and start spamming out settlers and workers. Build a couple warriors for scouting after a worker and workboat.

I like a worker first build with this start for 2 reasons ... you have gems, and you can't work a 2 hammer tile until your border pop. I'm not sure what the ideal improvement order is here, but as long as you improve the corn and the gems asap and work them, you are in good shape.

It might be a good exercise to work through it. CivCorpse, do you have the initial position available, or do I need to create my own?

It might be a good exercise to work through it. CivCorpse, do you have the initial position available, or do I need to create my own?


I agree, if you still have the BC4000 save, the easiest test is to just play through it.

definatly worker first with this start...

Without a good hammer tile it's worker first. (Worker at 23 instead of somewhat 36 which means
all land tiles get improved ~13 turns earlier. The 4 versus 3 food of the clam is not enough to compensate that)

Wow, what a start location, what difficulty is this?

But seriously I really don't think you can win a game while you are still calling yourself HP_Administrator.....sort it out.

Son of Red Dot (http://www.whiterose.org/danil/civ4/posts/RedDot.CivBeyondSwordSave)

I took the liberty of simplifying the position a little bit, and wasn't paying any attention to the other civs on the map.

I have the starting save for you

I would have gone with a build/research order like worker>workboat and Agriculture>mining. get all your food resources up ASAP and then worry about getting your pop up to 5 so you can actually run those three gems and do a Civil Service oracle slingshot.

I think you should settle a production city asap where you warrior stands in your turn 3 pic.
So much food, and the hills to go with!

About archery, knowing that samurais require Iron, I would certainly research IW before archery.

Wow, what a start location, what difficulty is this?

But seriously I really don't think you can win a game while you are still calling yourself HP_Administrator.....sort it out.

lol


(10 char)

You don't need to be so worried about invasion on Monarch; the AIs don't attack that soon unless you completely box them in. At anything below Emperor you can get by with Warriors for quite some time. Archers are a last resort, and I wouldn't waste hammers on Walls.

I use warriors on emperor just fine...

You don't need to be so worried about invasion on Monarch; the AIs don't attack that soon unless you completely box them in. At anything below Emperor you can get by with Warriors for quite some time. Archers are a last resort, and I wouldn't waste hammers on Walls.

The good thing about walls, is they count towards your powergraph but don't cost anything as far as maint is concerned. Also, they don't die. Before cats they boost every defender in the city(not sure about mounted troops though). The extra 20% could mean the difference in whether your last defender survives. And since i am protective, they are 1/2 price. Even when cats are available, they might buy an extra turn to whip one more defender or to be able to apply a promotion before the assault, while the attacker bombards the defenses.

walls or barracks are good for building to increase your power. i generally build walls only if i 1) have stone 2) protective (as you pointed out) or 3)i really need the defensive bonus cause that's my boarder with shaka :lol:

Praetorian
8 :strength:
1 :move:
Unique Unit for the Roman Empire
Replace Swordsman
-2 Difficulty Levels


:lol:

In order for Walls to have a noticeable impact on the power graph I think you need them in every city. I've looked for the change and haven't seen it just building a couple.

As for the defensive bonus, if it comes into play then I'm doing something wrong in most games.

One thing that I dont understand is why do you care about the powergraph. It doesn't mean anything and it does not provide you any strategical advantage. Depending on the circumstances you can easily defeat an opponent with a higher score. In fact at some point you have to do this if you want to win on Monarch or higher.

if you have a low power score you may look like an easy target and AI is more likely to declare war on you. but this is not necessarily bad either. this way AI saves you from "you declared war on our friend" penalties.

and for the building order issue, I think worker first is the best strategy in most cases

One thing that I dont understand is why do you care about the powergraph. It doesn't mean anything and it does not provide you any strategical advantage. Depending on the circumstances you can easily defeat an opponent with a higher score. In fact at some point you have to do this if you want to win on Monarch or higher.

if you have a low power score you may look like an easy target and AI is more likely to declare war on you. but this is not necessarily bad either. this way AI saves you from "you declared war on our friend" penalties.


Power graph is how to AI descides who to pick on. If your powergraph is high enough then AI's won't declare on you, no matter how agressive they are. It will keep the AI's from dogpiling you early and a single war when unprepared can devastate a game.

Power graph is how to AI descides who to pick on. If your powergraph is high enough then AI's won't declare on you, no matter how agressive they are. It will keep the AI's from dogpiling you early and a single war when unprepared can devastate a game.

The statement is too general.
I had declarations from AIs when I had twice their power and more.
It's about possibilities, if you are high in relative power you get declarations less likely.

Ofcourse anyone can declare a war it is a matter of probabilities. Thats what I tried to say. All I am saying is building a wall JUST for the sake of a high power score is not rational IMO