Not seen this before..

I thought i would get the ball rolling.

1. Planning cities at the start. How many times I get mid game and think I have no great HE, commerce, science or GP farm. Even after a game I look at maps and think theres still no obvious location. Counting food and hill tiles is not something i enjoy doing.
2. losing direction mid game. You know where you just dont know where to take your cities or the AI seems to overwhelm you.
3. Late game wars. I have no idea reguards to helicopters and other units as I rarely reach that stage of a game. :lol::lol:

Micromanagement. I really cannot be bothered to fiddle with my cities population constantly.

Gumbolt:

I'm right with you on mid-game management. I tend to think I do a pretty solid job initially of getting enough workers built, plotting key city sites, and claiming first the ones at risk of other civs claiming. But I often hit a lull from about COL to lib where all I seem to focus on is getting to lib, and fail to do important things like getting national epic and heroic epic built, and starting to get specialization in cities other than my first 3-4 cities. I tend to find that almost any city coming after the first 3-4 ends up being less than optimally utilized.

I also tend to let early defense slip when I don't early rush and it occasionally costs me. But I often (about 50% of the time) will prioritize GW which will offset that risk. I really like to get infrastructure down early when I can, and sometimes that hurts.

Diplomacy,closely followed by Espionage..

But I often hit a lull from about COL to lib where all I seem to focus on is getting to lib


This happens to me often, and I've frankly started to enjoy losing the Liberalism race lately - it opens up so many other possibilities. As long as it's there my natural inclination is to go for it, which makes sense, but sometimes a different strategy is more suitable and I get blinded by Liberalism.

As for the weakest part of my game, probably identifying windows of opportunity with regards to war. It can be difficult to gauge when is the right time to attack who - and with what amount, or kind, of force. Often by the time I make the decision to fully mobilize for war against someone the window's already closing and I don't make it in time - for example, if my target managed to acquire Engineering and built castles everywhere and I don't have enough siege (because I didn't mobilize early enough).

Air warfare is a big weakness of mine since I never use air units, but my games rarely make it that far so it's not often exposed.

Diplomacy,closely followed by Espionage..

I hear you on the espionage one. I see games where people have 4-5 spies built just before they declare war. I am the kinda guy that thinks 2 turns into the war... Do i need a spy?.... Ooops.

I never really ever got my head around why you could give culture to a city for 5%. You dont need to know everything to win a game. Just a few basics. :lol:

Gathering the energy to think rationally.
Seriously, like 95% of my games are just pointless finger-workouts lacking any kind of brain activity.

When I am thinking, well... Production and wonders especially.

In SP.
1. Micromanagement.
2. Espionage.
3. Drifting. Especially in the midgame when there's so much to build, and fairly limited production.

In MP.
!. Experimentation. I should experiment with different openings in SP, not against other people.

1. Building a spaceship.
2. Loosing a long term vision [i mean entering mode when i just click next builds]
3. Any situation without target AI to kill.
4. GP farms without wonders. My best ones are Great Library, ToA, NE and go do war:)

Everything I just don't understand how I win this game is it dumbed down so much ? or am I playing on too easy a level
Even Noble level players show better city spec then me so how do I win ?

Workers. I cannot stand micromanaging every single worker in my 10, 14 city empire.

The Globe Theater.

I think I've built it maybe once, even then it was late game. I know its merits (drafting powerhouse city), I just always forget, or never have a huge city with happy issues (I always use that one civic, um, the one where each military unit gives +1 :mischief:)

I'm still waiting to try Dave's Catapult Globe Theater trick but again, I rarely deviate to drama, let alone build 8 theaters (I play HUGE) to then be allowed to build globe.

1. Late classical/early medieval expansion. When I'm done with my early cities (usually 6-8) I always find myself sitting down, improving my economy. Often there is still some room to settle or barb city to capture and I'm ALWAYS: "Ok, I'll go there in a few turns, just let me build this XY first". Eventually I move my lazy ass there, but often some AI beats me.

2. Mid-game whipping. After the first switch to caste system, I never switch back to slavery. I know it would be useful, but I never do.

3. Drafting. I do it only as a desperate move and my Globe/drafting city always comes online too late to matter. I know drafting could net some 20 units in a few turns, but still don't do it. As a little excuse, lately I find myself using mass mounted units most of the times and draftees aren't very useful.

Diplomacy. The rule of thumb I use to follow is try to keep half of the civs happy with me. The last few games i've played i try to keep everyone happy and now its the mid game and everyone is annoyed/cautious w/ me. I need to pick my targets and keep them happy and plan for the ones to not be happy to be targets for war.

The first is deliberate:

I never use Slavery. :)

The second is also deliberate:

I can't be bothered to micromanage worked tile assignments.

The third is not deliberate:

I keep forgetting to double-check whether the AI has assigned the wrong @!##@!!! specialists. :)

Micro, early tile work choices, and expansion rate. Some game I hit expo rate perfectly, others it is off. The first two, however, are CONSISTENT holes in my play, and probably what prevents me from easily winning immortal games.

I can't be bothered to compute optimal paths, but that slows down the most important part of the game substantially.

I win on high levels using extremely abusive diplo knowledge - there are a couple people who haven't beaten immortal who often put up more beakers than me.

I could say any specific thing but really patience. I honestly feel I am a better player than Noble but I lose patience easily, making rash, heady decisions that get me in big trouble or just bog me down to the point where I alt-f4

I'm pretty well-rounded except for using National Wonders. Half the time, I wait because I don't think I know where I want them. Sometimes, I just forget them, or I feel like I need to build something else, or I figure that I want to race for a World Wonder because I can always build National Wonders... There are many a game that go by where I forget to build the Globe, National Epic, Hermitage, National Park, West Point, and the list goes on.

At least I can usually plan a Moai City and Oxford. I feel good about that. :)

Overall what I lack the most is a *consistant* ability to focus and synergize all the "micro skills" I've learned into a fully coherent whole that properly leverages map, leader, and game option conditions.

What that means is, I can micro tiles, great. I can build enough workers and keep the army big enough to avoid unwanted DoWs. Great. I can expand enough, great. I know when early war is appropriate and when to expand into sweet empty land. Great. I've even learned how to (partially at least) let go of my tree addiction and CHOP more, great. And so on with just about all the narrow classes of skills we players pick up along the way.

But it's in the realm of putting it all together in an effective, coherent way, that I often get lost and frustrated. Not all the time. Sometimes I'm "on" and owning just seems to come naturally as things click and I naturally/instinctively fit all the micro skills into a mad long-term plan, and so on. But there are other times that the strategic pieces I try to fit together are like square pegs into round holes, and the non-fit and non-synergy doesn't become apparent to me until mid-game when I'm 2nd or 3rd from the bottom of the powergraph wondering how I sunk that low.

It's hard to think of examples off hand, but it's something like: I'll REX and focus on that, and nail down a sweet resource pool, near-orgasmic chokepoints, boxing in nearby AIs, grabbing their resources to nerf them mercilessly, and meanwhile fund the economy up so the expansion can keep at it, and prepare the way to rebuild when the critical land is claimed. Then comes the dreaded "toot toot toot toot toot toot toooooooooooooooot." DoW. What....? OOPS, I forgot to PROTECT that expansion, and now there's a Shaka stack of axes and impis marching toward my warrior-garrisoned cities. SON of a B...OUDICA!

Then it's back to 4000 BC, and I remind myself, "don't forget the military, dammit!" And then that time around I get clobbered by new random events, like a barbarian horde nuke or some other silly series of events, and the opportunity to fix my previous mistakes is lost.

Then I switch to Medieval Total War for a while, in anger, lol.

It's totally my fault, but I just too frequently lost sight of keeping all of the 20 to 30 dimensions of strategy together and holistic and synergetic.

And at the higher levels I just get bored as my every action is a read-off of some walk-through article. No thinking involved (and when I do break away and try to figure it out on my own, obviously I get slammed).

Micro, can't be bothered with the tedious details.

Micro when it counts, and mounted units. Except for jumbos, I fail to see the point in mounted units. Yeah, they move 2 squares, great, that just means they waste a move every turn because they need to stay with my siege and CR troops anyway.

1. I get extreme tunnel vision during war, and can't be bothered with any kind of micro. Any decision not involving the troops gets handled with very little thought process - "Just click something and get back to the fighting".

2. I almost always use "middle-finger diplomacy" instead of putting any real thought into a coherent diplo strategy.

3. Lack of attention to infrastructure planning. For example, I almost never build the Globe Theatre (and therefore rarely use drafting because I haven't set it up properly by researching Drama, building theatres, etc). Another is forgetting to get a 6th university or bank built to enable Oxford or Wall Street, and therefore delaying a powerful National Wonder while I build the last bank or uni in a weak :hammers: city. I also don't put enough thought into planning National Wonders in advance, relying on short-term "feel" for where they should go and regretting it in the late game.

4. Being too "isolationist" with monopoly techs that I've researched.

5. Forgetting/ignoring resource trades for too long, and therefore missing a chance to grab good ones early.

I think Skallagrimson put it best for me. Playing one more turn
because I want to see what happens with my plan when I should stop and think and see what the AI has been up to or the city manager.

Micro when it counts, and mounted units. Except for jumbos, I fail to see the point in mounted units. Yeah, they move 2 squares, great, that just means they waste a move every turn because they need to stay with my siege and CR troops anyway.

Build more spies and cause revolts, and/or use a mounted stack to handle the 20%/40% defense cities out in the middle of nowhere that the AI's like to build. Use flanking -- let your mounted be your siege.

I fail to see the point in mounted units. Yeah, they move 2 squares, great, that just means they waste a move every turn because they need to stay with my siege and CR troops anyway.
You have identified your weakness propely ;)

Gathering the energy to think rationally.
Seriously, like 95% of my games are just pointless finger-workouts lacking any kind of brain activity.


Same here...

Late game warfare. I tend to use the "build 100 tanks and roll" technique. I suck with Air Warfare, and I really dont use Naval-Air units very well considering my favored map types.

Same here...

I go into some kind of trance-like state. I do a lot of things that I can say my reasoning for later, but I never actually thought it out while playing. I have to actively look at games and correct after the fact, since I often don't realize what I'm actually doing while playing. This tendency is both a weakness and a strength though, IMO. It lends to performing poorly, yes, but the game spam leads to fast improvement...

Mid game buildaholism. Giving up when Dow'd.

Interesting thread.

My main weaknesses are city specialization, drafting, and using spies. I'll have my commerce cities working cottages and building multipliers, and I'll have my hammer cities building units, and I'll have a few cities that have enough food resources to run multiple specialists, but I'll often catch myself building rifles and cavalry without having a heroic epic built; doh! I almost never build globe, and it's one of the most powerful wonders in the game, but the city advisor will pop up and suggest a theater, and I'll just be like "psssh... I don't need a theater, that's stupid." Hermitage, almost never build that. Ironworks I only build if I'm going to build a spaceship. West point, too expensive, almost never build it. Moai sucks, I hate working water tiles. I usually finish before wall street gets built, so really I think the only national wonder I build on a regular basis is oxford.

Drafting; I think I avoid drafting because I hate turning my research down and free speech or bureacracy are such tech beasts.

Spies; I love state property and find myself grabbing that great spy and realizing that I haven't built a regular spy yet. I figure, if the ai wants to poison my water, whatever, go ahead and waste your eps. I'd rather have the passive effects and be able to know what people are researching.

I go into some kind of trance-like state. I do a lot of things that I can say my reasoning for later, but I never actually thought it out while playing. I have to actively look at games and correct after the fact, since I often don't realize what I'm actually doing while playing. This tendency is both a weakness and a strength though, IMO. It lends to performing poorly, yes, but the game spam leads to fast improvement...

That's the problem. I play some few hours and then I like wake up and think 'why am I doing this?'. It's rather pointless from my gaming-for-fun point of view, and I have other stuff I could do. Playing with a friend helps with this.
I do love Civ when I'm thinking since it kinda stimulates the kinds of thinking and logic I don't normally encounter in life, its just the mechanic click-fests that I hate.

Hi

1) City placement, NO clue about how to do that right. I always end up looking later and seeing them and thinking sheesh if that one was just ONE tile over this way or that way it would have been a AWESOME city. Most times mine are either too close or to far appart. And in games like NC or LHC when I look at other players maps I NEVER end up picking same city sites as most of the others :/.

2) micromanaging tiles in a city. I always read wlak throughs like in sis's alc games where they say things like "I worked this tile until this thing was built then as soon as it was finished I worked this tile" I hardly ever do anything like that.

2) tech pathing --I read people saying things like "I needed this tech A so I reasearched tech B first to lower the beakers needed for A" NO clue what techs lower beakers for what.

3) economies -- NEVER done a CE or SE economy. I just do what I do and if nebody asks just says "uhm it's a.. it's a ummm 'hybrid' yeah thats what it is" :P

4) tech trading--really no clue as to what is good trade or bad trade. I cant ever really tech broker. Half the time even when I TRY they wont trade what I want grrr.

5) Diplomacy I hardly ever TRY to get AI to friendly. NOO Idea how to use vassals. HATE giving in to demands and 9/10 just refuse on principle. Especially if it an AI that been annoying me EVEN if it was in another games. Like I will think hay Vicky backstabbed me last game so NOOO way I am helping her this game. In fact depending on how bad they tciked me off sometimes the next game they show up in all of sudden PRIORITY of game is to make sure they die hehe.

And as for "diplomatic" wins. My idea of diplomatic win is bullying 5 vassals to vote for me so I can win. It is RARE (in fact I can think of only ONE game)where I win by another AI's who voted for me just cuz they were friendlier with me than with the other candidate.

6) waring: early game. late game, cross continental, naval war air wars ALL wars are a pain for me.

7)promoting units Im never good at picking promotions and HATE having units running round with that blue glow so I NEVER save promotions I just promote em as soon as they level just to get rid of it instead of saving them. My idea of "planning" promotions is like saying "ok we in gunpowder age and the tuffest ai's all have it so now all units gets pinch if they can" or "ok bw out now so a cpl of axes get combat then shock, a cpl spears will go up combat then formation EVERYTHING else get CR"

8) using units I kill off units waaaaaay to much. Some early wars I COUNT on half my army dying figuring ok I will be in negative while they marching over BUT once they take the capitol and pillage the rinky dink cities between gold from that and fact that at least half will end up daying I will end up MAKING gold by end of it. And you definitely do NOT want to end up in the siege core I would say LITERALLY 90% of my dead are siege units.

But THEN after awhile it ends up being opposite. SOme games there are a few units that been with me since they were axemen and now they are rifles or infantry or whatever. THOSE guys I get attactched to and try to protect them and never let them attack UNLESS I am sure they have good odds at not dying.

9)City managemnt. I like BIG PRETTY cities so I end up building LOTS of buildings in all my cities if I can :) and sometimes I will even postpone wars cause I cant build units now until after cities with bad health builds a grocer so the yucky faces go away and they can grow again or until all the big cities build jails so I they wont go into ww so fast THEN they can start building units again.

10) wonderchasing I LIKE the big shinies and get pouty when I cant get em. In fact cept for backstabbing me QUICKEST way an AI can move to top of the die list is to beat me to a wonder I want ESPECIALLY if I am already working on it but they build it first grrr.

And though I like em I hardly ever use em strateggically like unless making sure pottery all done before Oracle is finished so I can get MC counts I have NEVER done a "slingshot" of anything :/.

11) Teching it takes a LONG time to get beakers up to where I like em and for looong parts of game even in games I am doing good in I almost ALWAYS end up behind and have to catch up. It is VERY rare game where I am "most advanced" from start to finish

12)coorporations other than trying to always get Sushi and mining I never use em. I dont even know what techs open up the others.

13) hammers not that it hard for me to get em usually it just the opposite I focus waaaaay to much on hammers. Every guide pretty much talks about maximizing empire commerce or gold or beakers so I KNOW hammers hsould be lower priority. But it goes back to where I said I LIKE big pretty cities and to be big and pretty they HAVE to be able to build stuff. So even when I TRY to make a cottage city or heavy food city I end u moving it over to little less idae spot where it may lose a few flat tiles to get some mines or plains forest or SOMETHING so it can build stuff.

14) Paying attention: You DONT wanna know how MANY times I have build 'mids or teched monarchy or something and then several turns later "oops I forgot to switch out of despotism" or noticing a city I put on "wealth" at some point and then just left it there. That one reason I NEVER auto workers or automate ANYTHING if I can help it just cuz I KNOW I will end up forgetting about em. I mean even with taht pretty much ALL my games then get to modern era end with a cpl of poor caravals still sailing around on auto explore going "is she EVER gonna call us home the map was all explored AGES ago??"

And that JUST the SHORT list of things I need to get better on hehe :P. There are TONS of other things I need to get better at and I am sure TONS of other things I just dont realize I am doing bad just cuz I dont know enough about game yet to realize I am doing wrong :/.

Kaytie

Drafting? I need to try that sometime.

Otherwise, it varies. Some games, my cities specialize so well that I feel that I played a "perfect" game. Other games, especially if I'm missing that military pump city, I basically won't build units, and when my neighbour who has about half my cities declares war on me, I'm totally sunk. I mean, why should I build an axe in 2 turns when I can go for the oracle in 8 turns?

My main other one is espionage. I've even played a couple games with no espionage ticked, just because I've been pissed off about people poisoning my water, and my spies not able to do anything against them. Or I'd have cases where I'd forget to tweak my sliders early, so my 4 EP early game go against the same foes, so I end up with 0 against my neighbour and like 100 against other people on another island. Even just deciding who to focus on. Do I put more against my friendly neighbour, or do I put them against someone who I'll go attack? Do I split them up, or focus them? Just stuff I need to iron out.

Follow-through. I succumb to the bore around 1AD in the average game.

Late game waring

All of the above. :(

7)promoting units Im never good at picking promotions and HATE having units running round with that blue glow so I NEVER save promotions I just promote em as soon as they level just to get rid of it instead of saving them. My idea of "planning" promotions is like saying "ok we in gunpowder age and the tuffest ai's all have it so now all units gets pinch if they can" or "ok bw out now so a cpl of axes get combat then shock, a cpl spears will go up combat then formation EVERYTHING else get CR"

:lol:I REALLY HATE THAT BLUE GLOW, and usually think of promotions like that, oh did I say I HATE THAT BLUE GLOW?

I said "all the above" and I pretty much meant it, but I'm getting some really good tips just from reading other people's responses to the question. :)

The more I read this board the more I know I suck. I'm a prince player and I do not think there is anything I do great. My biggest weakness is playing the map. I seem to have the same strats in 75% of my game that always amounts to a domination victory that takes way too long. I'm kind of a coward too...I calculate risk very conservatively.

Good thread op. Also thanks Kaytie I have most if not all of those issues as well and got a good laugh out of that post.

There are many things I'm hilariously bad at.

1.) Modern age warfare. My games are usually decided earlier... I know how to lead a lightning campaign to do a little jig on the smoldering ruins of the UN or a culture city but that's about it.

2.) Lightbulbing. I hate it and rarely do so unless I'm with my back to a wall... and occasionally remember that I could have equalised considerably earlier.

3.) Pushing for victory. I tend to err on the side of caution and inflate my economy as if I was compensating for something. Shiny wonders, additional cities, infrastructure, corporations... sometimes things would have gone a lot quicker had I focused on winning rather than playing with myself.

4.) Too much or too little focus. All too often I don't have a plan and simply look for opportunities. At others I'm trying to force through a predetermined strategy and get a bit of tunnel vision.
I'm sure something in between would be better...

I have many of these listed above to some degree. Like micromanagement and war-time tunnel vision. I also fall prey to forgetting to change a build, wake a worker, or do the other things the game won't prompt you for. Several times the AI has sent a little 1 or 2 unit pillage party into my lands, and I think "I should send a few units to get them" but after the long turn of moving other units around their territory and managing new builds, I hit end-turn and look, there they still are, pillaging my iron and killing my worker.

But I have 2 more I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Archipelagos. I have no problems moving large armies around on land. I'm fine with an moving them across an ocean for a nice amphibious invasion. But separate all those cities with small strips of water and I can't do it. I just hate the logisitcal hassle of loading and managing transports for an entire map. I usually just quit those type of maps around the industrial age, even when I'm winning.

Conquest victories. I always hit domination first when going for a military victory. Its hard enough to capture every city instead of ~60% of them, but the game also has to throw in resistance fighters and uprisings when you raze a city as well. I don't have the patience to win a conquest victory when the domination victory is much easier and faster. But I love that conquest victory movie.

I go into some kind of trance-like state. I do a lot of things that I can say my reasoning for later, but I never actually thought it out while playing. I have to actively look at games and correct after the fact, since I often don't realize what I'm actually doing while playing. This tendency is both a weakness and a strength though, IMO. It lends to performing poorly, yes, but the game spam leads to fast improvement...

But seriously, civ is a huge game. There so many aspects of it it gives me a headache. There are many cities to micromanage, many rivals to microdiplo, many units to deploy here and there (city garison, counterattack if needed, preparing SoD, etc.), then there is also wonder rushes, teching, and so on and so on. I tend to have no real plan and do what I feel is good at the moment. Like ordering a theatre in a city because I think theatre would be good (and I not always realize that said city is a Capital with GT and needs no happiness). When I'm finishing a turn I ussualy have some plans for the next one. But. When the next turn comes I have to deal with all those "what to build next?" popups and with all those attention whores AIs who offers deals or demands money/tech or wants me to go to war with something. After that I have to give free workers something to do. Then I must fortify active units again (e.g. those who just finished healing). By the time I finish this "compulsory movement" phase I find that I completely forgot all my plans for this turn. And five turns later I remember that I needed to deal with that unhappiness in London - and I remember this because angry mob tears London apart destroying improvements. And if I'm at war it gets even worse because I must watch all the AI's moves what takes forever and I forget everything even before my turn starts.
I wonder how do I win at all with such a poor "managing"...


Several times the AI has sent a little 1 or 2 unit pillage party into my lands, and I think "I should send a few units to get them" but after the long turn of moving other units around their territory and managing new builds, I hit end-turn and look, there they still are, pillaging my iron and killing my worker.

Yeah thats exactly an example from my games too. When AI turn comes it pillages something and I think "oh, I must send something to deal with them" but by my turn I just forget it. And when the next AI turn comes it pillages again... Shell we write everything down? :(

Do you have similar problems? How do you deal with them?

But seriously, civ is a huge game. There so many aspects of it it gives me a headache. There are many cities to micromanage, many rivals to microdiplo, many units to deploy here and there (city garison, counterattack if needed, preparing SoD, etc.), then there is also wonder rushes, teching, and so on and so on. I ten to have no real plan and do what I feel is good. When I'm finishing a turn I ussualy have some plans for the next one. But. When the next turn comes I have to deal with all those "what to build next?" popups and with all those attention whores AIs who offers deals or demands money/tech or wants me to go to war with something. After that I have to give free workers something to do. Then I must fortify active units again (e.g. those who just finished healing). By the time I finish this "compulsory movement" phase I find that I completely forgot all my plans for this turn. And five turns later I remember that I needed to deal with that unhappiness in London - and I remember this because angry mob tears London apart destroying improvements.
I wonder how do I win all the time with such poor "managing".

Do you have similar problems? How do you deal with them?

I focus. My goal is "how can I win", or if playing under special rules, "how do I attain the victory condition of choice?". I never, ever deviate from that focus. Every decision for what is best is based on winning. In terms of micro, I have most hotkeys memorized, I use waypoints and queue's like crazy, and I've gotten pretty good at early game tile swapping quickly (though I suspect with good reason to suspect that my choices need work on occasion). Once I set all that up, decisions can be made across a few seconds. Same thing with checking the AIs that can declare, it takes like 4 seconds, and sometimes there are 0.

I do favor cottages over specs because of this, as they require less clicks and checking to run optimally. I still run specs though.

Also, deity seems to be a pretty hefty wall. This might be just because it's deity, the highest jump in civ IV, but I suspect my micro is the limiter.

Tunnel vision during warfare is definitely one of my problems. I'm good about getting all of the national wonders up but that darn globe theater. I'm not much of a drafter, and this is probably the reason why.

Another common knuckle headed mistake I often perform is to set my exploring units on guard to farm incoming barbs and forget to move them back to exploring. Turns after turns will sometimes go by before I pan over random units hanging out on woodland hills, doh!

I'd say that, the later the game goes on, the weaker I am. I blame my computer for this, because it lags up when there's a lot of units on the screen, which makes the later game not much fun to play.

The weakest part of my game is to let my military lage while I am trying to push my city buildings and science along.

Second weakest is losing focus on victory strategy. I would win sooner if I would stick to one approach. Sometimes I find my self building a spaceship, playing the diplomat and pushing culture simultaneously.

Thirdly I let late game wars distract me. If someone declares war on me I feel obligated to knock him out.

Balancing expansion, its hard to resist putting up extra cities, I too often go to 0% slider and end up building research (wealth if I am at currency). My goal is to not go below 20-30% but I always break. However I recover quite well, have yet to find unfixable economy, still its a royal PITA

I lose direction on the way to lib a bit and fall behind militarily during that period so sometimes have trouble getting the ball rolling on a cuirasser rush.

I recently fixed my spy builidng problem, I build them in my COMMERCE cities instead of military cities as I tend to get my commerce buildings up fast with the whip/farms and chopping

I tend to build too many units early for my maintenance

I have recently gotten better on national wonders, I just build them if its suboptimal for later, I just rationalize I got it early so greater long term benefit.

Oh boy, where to start? I could go on for hours.

I often have a hard time staying focused when it comes to teching, and will stray off onto unnecessary tangents.

I used to have a near-psychotic obsession with keeping that little GPT number in the upper-left corner from turning red. I'm better at this now, though.

I sometimes have difficulty deciding where to place my cites, obsessing over placing them EXACTLY right.

I have a hard time remembering that I need to keep expanding past my first 4-6 cities if there's still land left to grab. I get sidetracked with buildings and units, and keep putting off more Settlers/Workers until eventually the AI settles everything.

Despite my best efforts to stop myself from doing so, I probably still build way too many unnecessary buildings in most of my cities. Again, I think I'm getting better at this, but I have a ways to go.

My single biggest flaw, as I started to move up the difficulty ladder, was warmongering. I would never build enough units, consistently underestimating my needs; this, of course, caused my wars to quickly grind to a halt as I found my force insufficient to the task. Then I started going the other way and pumping out so many units that I was vastly overdoing it and hindering my economic development. This is the area I'm trying the hardest to improve right now, and probably the biggest thing holding me back from winning consistently on Emperor.

I just kind of do things and can't explain them. I guess I just try to copy the good players on here, and it's gotten me some results (Emperor-ish level player).

Imagination, i can play a pretty good game in all stages but i sometimes lack the flair to turn a really bad start/situation around.

Sometimes i lack knowledge too especially in the unit promotions department. I don't think this aspect of the game is too important though.

beginning, deciding which technology to research.
always trying to skip bronze working.

beginning, deciding which technology to research.
always trying to skip bronze working.

Why on earth would you skip Bronze Working?

My weakness for playing goofy strats.

Why on earth would you skip Bronze Working?

Er... don't you feel it's expensive..?
sometimes my only worker have enough job to do, and have no time for chopping.
I can trade for it later.

My major problems in-game are threefold:

1. Lack of focus in regards to tech path (during the whole game, but especially during the early game)
2. Impatience when it comes to war (Declaring war before I have adequate troops)
3. I have a tendency to overproduce things when I fianlly do get around to producing them (And I do mean that)

Er... don't you feel it's expensive..?
sometimes my only worker have enough job to do, and have no time for chopping.
I can trade for it later.

I want to know where the copper is in order to protect my empire, I want to whip, and I want to chop. Waiting until alphabet then trading for it seems less than optimum.

Though even if you start with Mining, it's always cheaper to research Hunting/Archery -- empire protection is not enough; you need to be able to also make good use of chopping/whipping to make Bronze Working worth it.

I can't seem to get myself into a full-on, destroy-all-humans type warfare. I always have this urge to consolidate my holdings after I take them, even when it would be more advantageous to just go in for the kill. My other biggest weakness is that I forget to keep expanding after the initial REX and the initial colonization spam, so I often find myself sitting and scratching my head wondering how the AI suddenly got so far ahead of me until I notice that all of that empty space suddenly isn't empty anymore. My biggest problem though, is that I just can't keep my attention long enough to beat most games, and I usually end up just quitting and doing something else around the rennaisance.

I have never, ever, raced for Liberalism. I get the impression from reading these forums that it's just about everyone's main goal in every game, so there must be something to it.

I don't normally push for Liberalism unless I want Astronomy.

I have never, ever, raced for Liberalism. I get the impression from reading these forums that it's just about everyone's main goal in every game, so there must be something to it.

Although most people don't realize, it's not that getting lib is strong, its the tech line.

1. AIs research the bottom path first
2. Techs like philosophy and education trade excessively well
3. Education unlocks a top notch importance national wonder
4. Education also happens to be a co pre-req for gunpowder, economics, and so on.
5. Philosophy, lib's other pre-req, is on the line to techs like nationalism, constitution, and democracy.
6. Lib itself is needed for communism, and the lib route is the fastest way through sci meth techs.

Given the strength the lib line has just from researching it anyway, going for lib is a marginal cost for a pretty sound benefit.

Note that this path is SEALED by the AIs. Since virtually all AIs tend toward the bottom first, the player is half-forced to take lib path if he wants optimal beakers. This is because trades are the #1 beaker multiplier in the game - a powerful mechanism that can essentially increase research 100% or more if you can trade each tech for more than one, and that's a POST modifier multiplier. A 800 BPT empire could easily outdo someone getting 1100 by researching the correct techs and trading them. Easily. It's that important, and so often the lib path allows it more readily than other choices!

Lib and philo aren't really strong unless you are going to use any of the civics ( free speech/pacifism/communism/free religion), point is just researching them is often the same cost as whatever free tech you get, it also gives negative the free tech to the second person to lib. As such researching lib is often great for denial value, but sure it is also good for trading and sometimes just for the bonuses themselves...

I don't normally push for Liberalism unless I want Astronomy.

On pangea just use it to snag rifling. :D or if you're not quite that far ahead, nationalism or military tardition isn't bad.

My main weakness is when I load a save I often make a mistake that I wouldn't have made had I played it through. I forget things I had realized playing the day before.

Optimizing growth versus hammers is a little tough for me too, and some games I don't grow my cities as much as I could have as early as I could have, especially when the happy cap becomes a moving target during a war.

1.) Expansion, especially early expansion. I haven't been able to beat Prince yet, but I'm about to - in my current game, I'm far ahead, and the only reason for that is that I expanded properly in the early game. In every other attempt at Prince, I've had too few cities and that has led to my failure.

2.) War. I'm not a bad tactician - when I do fight, I fight the right battles at the right locations, and I tend to win them. However, I am terrible at planning and preparing for a war. I end up just building troops for thousands of years, and therefore keep having to research new military techs because by the time my army is big enough, it's outdated.

3.) Keeping my focus. I tend to play with short-term advantages in mind (like getting a good science city up and running, or building the Oracle) and completely forget to choose a victory condition and constantly pursue it.

I have never, ever, raced for Liberalism. I get the impression from reading these forums that it's just about everyone's main goal in every game, so there must be something to it.

Yeah, that 2,000 to 3,000 free beakers... it's worth delaying war for.

Liberalism is basically teching something more expensive with a discount, with an added bonus of opening up some useful civics. It is, in my opinion, the only viable deep beeline at that stage in the game. FS is excellent if you have good cottaged land. And FR is equally useful.

Liberalism is basically teching something more expensive with a discount, with an added bonus of opening up some useful civics. It is, in my opinion, the only viable deep beeline at that stage in the game. FS is excellent if you have good cottaged land. And FR is equally useful.

And it allows you to freely trade away education (because you don't have to worry about anyone getting liberalism first anymore,) liberalism, and possibly the tech that you take with liberalism.

1: Early rushes, always somehow have too little soldiers too late.
2: Forget watching the ai's and demo graphs, getting owned by an ai surprise attack while busy with someone else.
3: General impatience, not taking an extra turn to explore or wait for a settler escort and then ending up in a less than perfect city site or a settler being eaten by an animal or barb.

I find diplomacy real hard. You have to have a lot of troops on higher levels to deter your enemies, but that slows you way down. Otherwise you'll have a hard time to keep shaka and Monty at bay. But then if you have the troops all the peacemongers keep teching away. And on higher levels your neighbours are more reluctant to trade stuff or only make lopsided trades. Then you have to really think about who you are turning down, the warmongers that might come back at you or the techers that won't like you enough to trade ;-)

I seem to mess it all up, thats why I always on higher levels end up killing everybody;-) + the AI sucks at warfare ;-)

Further exploring "where I go wrong", I'm finding more and more that the ability Deity players have to read a map and instantly see some gimmick that'll allow a high-level victory using whatever particular strategy fully synergizes everything to do with it... I don't have that. This is why I suck at higher levels, why I can only beat Emperor when following a walk-through with all the same map and game options, leader choice, etc. And it's why I'm choosing to step down to Prince to get more solid at map-reading before climbing back up.

I find diplomacy real hard. You have to have a lot of troops on higher levels to deter your enemies, but that slows you way down. Otherwise you'll have a hard time to keep shaka and Monty at bay. But then if you have the troops all the peacemongers keep teching away. And on higher levels your neighbours are more reluctant to trade stuff or only make lopsided trades. Then you have to really think about who you are turning down, the warmongers that might come back at you or the techers that won't like you enough to trade ;-)

I seem to mess it all up, thats why I always on higher levels end up killing everybody;-) + the AI sucks at warfare ;-)

AI mechanics for trades do not vary by level.

The AI has a fixed power ratio with the player, above which it will dow and if it's not strong enough, it won't. There's no reduction in probability. It's a line and if it's crossed that's that.

On "high" levels, it is literally impossible to build enough troops to deter your enemies from attacking. You 100% can't do it. Try getting 150% of the AI power on emperor, let alone immortal or deity. Ridiculous. That's not even worth trying. Just make enough to protect yourself if they do come and try to avoid war through more sensible means.

Clumsy mouse control is a major problem. I'll reload to correct big things like accidental DoWs, city liberations, and tech gifts (of which there are many). But the smaller ones I just have to live with, meaning lost efficiency and, in some cases, lost units.

In terms of strategy, the Space Race has always been a big weakness of mine. For some reason, I have trouble staying focused, and usually end up wasting a lot of effort on unnecessary distractions.

But my greatest failings are, as always, recklessness and random stupidity. I've managed to iron out most of the specific problems mentioned by other posters (thanks in part to my occasional WB-abusing sandbox games), but the flaws in my personality are not so easily overcome.

The weakest part of my game?

My unbreakable desire to achieve world peace, whatever it costs...
...my enemies
;)

I play difficulties beneath my ability so I don't have to bother with diplomacy lol

Diplomacy and Espionage for me...

Further exploring "where I go wrong", I'm finding more and more that the ability Deity players have to read a map and instantly see some gimmick that'll allow a high-level victory using whatever particular strategy fully synergizes everything to do with it... I don't have that. This is why I suck at higher levels, why I can only beat Emperor when following a walk-through with all the same map and game options, leader choice, etc. And it's why I'm choosing to step down to Prince to get more solid at map-reading before climbing back up.

The trouble with that is, the higher levels seem to simply have a different rhythm than the lower levels, especially regarding tech. You can forget about waiting for the AIs to take Alphabet on Prince, for example... and any bulbing you do will usually only be worth the value of the bulbed tech itself. And tech and map-reading intertwine...

I know a major weakness I have is that I can't stand to switch production when something else pops up.

Sometimes it's ok if the next build is going to be relatively quick and you can go back to the previous one, but the idea of losing hammers freaks me out. Turns out buildings don't start their hammer decay for a fairly long time so these worries are largely unnecessary. Careful though because unit decay happens much sooner.

I could build a settler and go settle that spot but nooo, I've already started building this temple and have 14 turns to go. :(

As for the weakest part of my game, probably identifying windows of opportunity with regards to war. It can be difficult to gauge when is the right time to attack who - and with what amount, or kind, of force. Often by the time I make the decision to fully mobilize for war against someone the window's already closing and I don't make it in time - for example, if my target managed to acquire Engineering and built castles everywhere and I don't have enough siege (because I didn't mobilize early enough).


Quoting myself cause this just happened to me again. I decided to beeline Industrialism and hit Toku with Kremlin-discounted rush-bought tanks. When I started preparing he had grenadiers and cavalry. When I was ready with 30 tanks he had infantry and machine guns. And this was on Epic even. What followed was a long, sluggish war at the end of which I began gaining the upper hand, but Gilgamesh was racing towards culture and I resigned.

I need to sharpen my war preparations skills. I didn't scout out Toku's terrain; I didn't assign my espionage to him; I didn't bribe anyone into war with him to slow him down; and up until I started researching Industrialism, I traded techs with his vassal, Isabella. I also forgot completely about his UB, which gives him +10% production at Assembly Line. All in all, I misjudged the amount of units I needed and mistimed the attack.

AND I forgot I needed oil for tanks so I had to tech to Combustion to get it - I could've traded for it with Gilgamesh earlier if I'd paid attention. I play too fast, I need to slow down.

Although most people don't realize, it's not that getting lib is strong, its the tech line.

1. AIs research the bottom path first
2. Techs like philosophy and education trade excessively well
3. Education unlocks a top notch importance national wonder
4. Education also happens to be a co pre-req for gunpowder, economics, and so on.
5. Philosophy, lib's other pre-req, is on the line to techs like nationalism, constitution, and democracy.
6. Lib itself is needed for communism, and the lib route is the fastest way through sci meth techs.

Given the strength the lib line has just from researching it anyway, going for lib is a marginal cost for a pretty sound benefit.

Note that this path is SEALED by the AIs. Since virtually all AIs tend toward the bottom first, the player is half-forced to take lib path if he wants optimal beakers. This is because trades are the #1 beaker multiplier in the game - a powerful mechanism that can essentially increase research 100% or more if you can trade each tech for more than one, and that's a POST modifier multiplier. A 800 BPT empire could easily outdo someone getting 1100 by researching the correct techs and trading them. Easily. It's that important, and so often the lib path allows it more readily than other choices!

So true. I find myself gunning for lib in so many games, I'll start new ones saying to myself, no lib race this game I'm going for guilds and gunpowder and going to start a war! But I end up going for liberalism anyway because, oh philosophy is only a few turns? I could really use that.. then education is available? hmm... the lib path just has way stronger economic techs than the other paths.

Initial expansion - I'm a cockroach :(

So really the Lib beeline would not be as powerful if some AIs went for it as well? If this is the case, perhaps it's worth changing the AI techpaths in Better AI. Come to think of it, last Better AI game I noticed Pacal seemed to sort of beeline Communism through Liberalism.

The trouble with that is, the higher levels seem to simply have a different rhythm than the lower levels, especially regarding tech. You can forget about waiting for the AIs to take Alphabet on Prince, for example... and any bulbing you do will usually only be worth the value of the bulbed tech itself. And tech and map-reading intertwine...

That's a pretty good insight there: rhythm. After all, everything boils down to pace, speed, turn advantage, and at the higher levels things just go CRAZY. Even following a walk-through, I really just can't believe how easy it is for the deity-bragger doing his "this is how you beat Emperor by building nothing but shiny wonders" walk-through, and yet when I shadow on a different map and try to match the steps, goals, techs, build queues, etc., I just get absolutely massacred. I settle three cities by the time the AIs have 20, they're crowding me in, and all they have to do is cough a few times and my little hamlet full of pyramids and various stone monuments is blown away.

I just.... don't... get it.

I know "intellectually" what all the pieces of advice are. "Chop", okay, I can chop. "Whip", okay, I can whip. "Dot map", okay, I can dot map. The minute components of these strategies, I can nail down just fine. But to weave it all together at a pace that matches these frustrating walk-throughs that make it look easy... I just freaking give up.

I just suck too bad to even play Monarch most of the time, so screw it, back to Prince.

That's a pretty good insight there: rhythm. After all, everything boils down to pace, speed, turn advantage, and at the higher levels things just go CRAZY. Even following a walk-through, I really just can't believe how easy it is for the deity-bragger doing his "this is how you beat Emperor by building nothing but shiny wonders" walk-through, and yet when I shadow on a different map and try to match the steps, goals, techs, build queues, etc., I just get absolutely massacred. I settle three cities by the time the AIs have 20, they're crowding me in, and all they have to do is cough a few times and my little hamlet full of pyramids and various stone monuments is blown away.

I just.... don't... get it.

I know "intellectually" what all the pieces of advice are. "Chop", okay, I can chop. "Whip", okay, I can whip. "Dot map", okay, I can dot map. The minute components of these strategies, I can nail down just fine. But to weave it all together at a pace that matches these frustrating walk-throughs that make it look easy... I just freaking give up.

I just suck too bad to even play Monarch most of the time, so screw it, back to Prince.

Assuming you micro properly, what probably holds you back is diplo and tech path. Optimal tech path varies wildly across difficulty levels. I find a major break between monarch/emp and immortal when it comes to trading for monarchy vs self-research, for example. Even on EMP lately it seems like the AIs just get it TOO SLOWLY, and I want to grow my cities NOW, so I have to self-research it or sit at a lower cap longer.

Now, proper micro implies some tile working and expansion priorities. 6 cities will do for the early game although more is nicer. Your first 2-3 settlers should be out pretty fast though, to block land and set you up to fill more.

Again, though, the timing changes a bit, and so does distance costs. Without repeatedly playing openings at a new level it's difficult to adjust, although diplo and tech whoring can go a LONG, LONG way to making weak play look stronger. Some of my recent LHC games are a good example of this - 3 straight immortal wins with lower level games having a higher tech rate but losing. That's not superior micro by me, or war ability, or anything but flat out diplo abuse. Trades are the greatest beaker multiplier in the game and isolating a target out of the trades will drop it back lightning fast.

The Globe Theater.

I think I've built it maybe once, even then it was late game. I know its merits (drafting powerhouse city), I just always forget, or never have a huge city with happy issues (I always use that one civic, um, the one where each military unit gives +1 :mischief:)

I'm still waiting to try Dave's Catapult Globe Theater trick but again, I rarely deviate to drama, let alone build 8 theaters (I play HUGE) to then be allowed to build globe.
you don't need a big city for glbe theater.
I've used once a simple 2 fishes city for permanent draft.
I just kind of do things and can't explain them. I guess I just try to copy the good players on here, and it's gotten me some results (Emperor-ish level player).
this is kind of impressive.
I'm a very thoughtful person, putting a lot of brains into things, and I struggle at emperor (well, in the HoF I have a deity win or 2, I even have a top spot on immortal, but it's HoF, not a "barbs on and random neighbours" game)
I have never, ever, raced for Liberalism. I get the impression from reading these forums that it's just about everyone's main goal in every game, so there must be something to it.
I saw a lot of answers already, but this is somehow odd.
You never tried a cultural victory?
Initial expansion - I'm a cockroach :(
easy to solve.
1) Play a land map.
2) build only the following sequence until you reach 0% on the tech slider
- worker
- warrior
- settler
3) cottage up the place.
4) enjoy your new style.

After reading noto2's post on choking (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310142) it's apparent (amongst many other things) I don't attack smart. I just raid the city leaving existing infrastructure in place. I see now it's better to shut that mine down than draw the war out by n number of turns.

With my attacks made smarter I could even go to war before I get armour, that would be a novelty :)

Hi

1) City placement, NO clue about how to do that right. I always end up looking later and seeing them and thinking sheesh if that one was just ONE tile over this way or that way it would have been a AWESOME city. Most times mine are either too close or to far appart. And in games like NC or LHC when I look at other players maps I NEVER end up picking same city sites as most of the others :/.

2) micromanaging tiles in a city. I always read wlak throughs like in sis's alc games where they say things like "I worked this tile until this thing was built then as soon as it was finished I worked this tile" I hardly ever do anything like that.

2) tech pathing --I read people saying things like "I needed this tech A so I reasearched tech B first to lower the beakers needed for A" NO clue what techs lower beakers for what.

3) economies -- NEVER done a CE or SE economy. I just do what I do and if nebody asks just says "uhm it's a.. it's a ummm 'hybrid' yeah thats what it is" :P

4) tech trading--really no clue as to what is good trade or bad trade. I cant ever really tech broker. Half the time even when I TRY they wont trade what I want grrr.

5) Diplomacy I hardly ever TRY to get AI to friendly. NOO Idea how to use vassals. HATE giving in to demands and 9/10 just refuse on principle. Especially if it an AI that been annoying me EVEN if it was in another games. Like I will think hay Vicky backstabbed me last game so NOOO way I am helping her this game. In fact depending on how bad they tciked me off sometimes the next game they show up in all of sudden PRIORITY of game is to make sure they die hehe.

And as for "diplomatic" wins. My idea of diplomatic win is bullying 5 vassals to vote for me so I can win. It is RARE (in fact I can think of only ONE game)where I win by another AI's who voted for me just cuz they were friendlier with me than with the other candidate.

6) waring: early game. late game, cross continental, naval war air wars ALL wars are a pain for me.

7)promoting units Im never good at picking promotions and HATE having units running round with that blue glow so I NEVER save promotions I just promote em as soon as they level just to get rid of it instead of saving them. My idea of "planning" promotions is like saying "ok we in gunpowder age and the tuffest ai's all have it so now all units gets pinch if they can" or "ok bw out now so a cpl of axes get combat then shock, a cpl spears will go up combat then formation EVERYTHING else get CR"

8) using units I kill off units waaaaaay to much. Some early wars I COUNT on half my army dying figuring ok I will be in negative while they marching over BUT once they take the capitol and pillage the rinky dink cities between gold from that and fact that at least half will end up daying I will end up MAKING gold by end of it. And you definitely do NOT want to end up in the siege core I would say LITERALLY 90% of my dead are siege units.

But THEN after awhile it ends up being opposite. SOme games there are a few units that been with me since they were axemen and now they are rifles or infantry or whatever. THOSE guys I get attactched to and try to protect them and never let them attack UNLESS I am sure they have good odds at not dying.

9)City managemnt. I like BIG PRETTY cities so I end up building LOTS of buildings in all my cities if I can :) and sometimes I will even postpone wars cause I cant build units now until after cities with bad health builds a grocer so the yucky faces go away and they can grow again or until all the big cities build jails so I they wont go into ww so fast THEN they can start building units again.

10) wonderchasing I LIKE the big shinies and get pouty when I cant get em. In fact cept for backstabbing me QUICKEST way an AI can move to top of the die list is to beat me to a wonder I want ESPECIALLY if I am already working on it but they build it first grrr.

And though I like em I hardly ever use em strateggically like unless making sure pottery all done before Oracle is finished so I can get MC counts I have NEVER done a "slingshot" of anything :/.

11) Teching it takes a LONG time to get beakers up to where I like em and for looong parts of game even in games I am doing good in I almost ALWAYS end up behind and have to catch up. It is VERY rare game where I am "most advanced" from start to finish

12)coorporations other than trying to always get Sushi and mining I never use em. I dont even know what techs open up the others.

13) hammers not that it hard for me to get em usually it just the opposite I focus waaaaay to much on hammers. Every guide pretty much talks about maximizing empire commerce or gold or beakers so I KNOW hammers hsould be lower priority. But it goes back to where I said I LIKE big pretty cities and to be big and pretty they HAVE to be able to build stuff. So even when I TRY to make a cottage city or heavy food city I end u moving it over to little less idae spot where it may lose a few flat tiles to get some mines or plains forest or SOMETHING so it can build stuff.

14) Paying attention: You DONT wanna know how MANY times I have build 'mids or teched monarchy or something and then several turns later "oops I forgot to switch out of despotism" or noticing a city I put on "wealth" at some point and then just left it there. That one reason I NEVER auto workers or automate ANYTHING if I can help it just cuz I KNOW I will end up forgetting about em. I mean even with taht pretty much ALL my games then get to modern era end with a cpl of poor caravals still sailing around on auto explore going "is she EVER gonna call us home the map was all explored AGES ago??"

And that JUST the SHORT list of things I need to get better on hehe :P. There are TONS of other things I need to get better at and I am sure TONS of other things I just dont realize I am doing bad just cuz I dont know enough about game yet to realize I am doing wrong :/.

Kaytie

It seems I have a twin sister

you don't need a big city for glbe theater.
I've used once a simple 2 fishes city for permanent draft.

this is kind of impressive.
I'm a very thoughtful person, putting a lot of brains into things, and I struggle at emperor (well, in the HoF I have a deity win or 2, I even have a top spot on immortal, but it's HoF, not a "barbs on and random neighbours" game)

I saw a lot of answers already, but this is somehow odd.
You never tried a cultural victory?

easy to solve.
1) Play a land map.
2) build only the following sequence until you reach 0% on the tech slider
- worker
- warrior
- settler
3) cottage up the place.
4) enjoy your new style.

Yeah, that's my main problem. I should squeeze out a few more workers, but you really don't want to see some of my early expansions. I happen to like leaders like Justinian and Joao.

Oh well, time to play another game on emperor.

I answered but didn't care to give MY weakness
I don't build enough workers.
never.
not once in all my games :eek:

Assuming you micro properly, what probably holds you back is diplo and tech path. Optimal tech path varies wildly across difficulty levels. I find a major break between monarch/emp and immortal when it comes to trading for monarchy vs self-research, for example. Even on EMP lately it seems like the AIs just get it TOO SLOWLY, and I want to grow my cities NOW, so I have to self-research it or sit at a lower cap longer.

Now, proper micro implies some tile working and expansion priorities. 6 cities will do for the early game although more is nicer. Your first 2-3 settlers should be out pretty fast though, to block land and set you up to fill more.

Again, though, the timing changes a bit, and so does distance costs. Without repeatedly playing openings at a new level it's difficult to adjust, although diplo and tech whoring can go a LONG, LONG way to making weak play look stronger. Some of my recent LHC games are a good example of this - 3 straight immortal wins with lower level games having a higher tech rate but losing. That's not superior micro by me, or war ability, or anything but flat out diplo abuse. Trades are the greatest beaker multiplier in the game and isolating a target out of the trades will drop it back lightning fast.

Diplo is probably a gigantic weakness of mine, come to think of it. I usually just try to match to favorite civics, and give into NON-TECH demands whenever. Fight sympathy wars, and I "think" I'm good, with "friends".

But, picking who the "friends" should be, I often have no clue. Just random "he's it".

He he, I was never good at tech brokering, so I just turned it off. :)

And I tend to spit in the face of any AI that demands jack from me, getting me into a lot of wars that could otherwise be avoided. I did well on Prince but getting over the "You want what? F&$# you!" habit has been a gamesaver on Monarch.

naval wars. I always seem to have a bunch of transports with not enough defending them.

The last time I fought an intercontinental war, I specifically invaded the backwards Tokugawa because he couldn't challenge my relatively small navy with his triremes and caravels. Otherwise, my army may not have made it to their shores.

On naval warfare vs the AI:

There's a cheesy workaround. Scout their cities. The AI tends to stick its large navy in one city. On the very first turn you declare, take this city amphibiously. It might cost you some extra units, but that cost is probably minimal compared to the 20-30 or more ships you just "sunk" (more like burned in port). After you do this even a minimal garrison for your transports should suffice.

Note that this tactic does not work if they declare on YOU however, so be careful with surprise dows or others coming to that AI's aid.

I'm really late to build the national wonders, and more importantly really late to pick sites for the national wonders, so I often find myself with e.g. the ideal Heroic Epic site already having gold/science improvements, or the ideal Globe site impossible to build since it's within 2 squares of an existing city.

I am slow to capture cities due to too little navy (for sailing to coastal cities instead of slogging through culture and STILL too little siege.

I'm still not much good at specializing cities, and I have never really managed to run an SE -- in fact only recently have I generated early non-wonder GP at all.

Do OK on Monarch though -- hopefully that will bring some hope to those afraid of that level. It's fairly heavy early micro that has brought me there, though.

My greatest weaknesses are

1) diplomacy, it amazes me how well the really good players can manage their opponents to keep them off their backs or even get them to do their bidding. I've tried to do better at this and am getting there slowly. In this I also include tech trading.

2) over expansion, in recent games I've built a lot of blocking cities too far out, when building a reasonable amount of cities closer to my capital would have put me in a better position to get those farther city sites after the AI had done all the work to develop them.

3) being too cautious when at war, I think that I spend too much time and too many troops garrisoning captured cities which ultimately drags out my wars by as much as 50%

Weaknesses:
1) Micromanagement in general; tile assignments, specialists etc.
2) Espionage - other than sending in spies and stealing techs, I have never tried running an EE
3) I don't use Slavery/Drafting a lot (to their full potential); I use Slavery to build a rush army and whip Courthouses and such but stop later on.

I'm a semi-confident Emperor level player btw. I normally play Continents or Pangaea, Normal Speed, Choose Religions, everything else default.

I've only stolen a handful of technologies, and never early in the game (last game I got Theology and Aesthetics, I think).

I believe Slavery loses its effectiveness as the game progresses. After you have your courthouses established (and the game progresses into the Medieval Ages), your core cities should be running higher population to make use of multiple improved tiles and specialists, whichever you choose. I thought my friend was crazy when he told me he whipped a wonder for a cost of 12 population...just because he could.

I've only stolen a handful of technologies, and never early in the game (last game I got Theology and Aesthetics, I think).

I believe Slavery loses its effectiveness as the game progresses. After you have your courthouses established (and the game progresses into the Medieval Ages), your core cities should be running higher population to make use of multiple improved tiles and specialists, whichever you choose. I thought my friend was crazy when he told me he whipped a wonder for a cost of 12 population...just because he could.

Kremlin whipping with bio farms in filler cities is really scary. Of course even when it's inefficient it can be worthwhile to rapidly produce a sizeable force of advanced troops.

After moving up to Emperor I think my early game is my main weakness. I very rarely manage it right: always expand too much or not enough, ending squeezed between multiple AIs or with a big empire but 79 turns for the next tech.
Lately I'm rolling A LOT of random starts, just to play them to 400-500 AD.
Something around 20% good games, 50% bad but manageable, 30% hopeless. Bad and hopeless are equally distributed between "too much" and "not enough".

"too much" expansion is usually a misnomer for "improperly timed with technology and/or worker production".

I actually wonder if city placement gaps of 3 rather than 4 on emperor is a better starting strategy to reduce cost. Not sure how much you save early on with a slight overlap. Then again this has to be weighed against what you might lose later on in a game. Hmmmmm. Although saving 2-3 gold a turn at start can be invaluable as its the difference between 20% science slider or 0%.

I also wondered about cost of building too many workers or warriors at the start. All these things add up but how far should you really take micro management on a game?

That being said once you have cottages/ courthouses/ markets/ extra trade routes and sailing your economy soon recovers.

I sometimes dont think its about over expanding at the start. Its trying to do everything at the start. 3 cities at size 3-5 adds much more value than 5 cities stuck at size 1-2.

I for one have certainly changed tact from the way I used to play at monarch.

Spacing sounds all well and good until the resources are somewhere else :/.

I just kind of do things and can't explain them. I guess I just try to copy the good players on here, and it's gotten me some results (Emperor-ish level player).

This sounds so very familiar, especially the Emperor-ish part. In no way i'm a real emperor player, but sometimes it just works out. Reading the forums has helped me to use some moves/choices (REX or not, Oracle or not, tech-paths etc.) to get a higher standard in every game.


The trouble with that is, the higher levels seem to simply have a different rhythm than the lower levels, especially regarding tech.

Very much true. That's probably why i'm a Emperor-ish player. I'm not fully in control, but i am used to the rythm.


Apart from that, my weaknesses are:

- city specialization; every time in 1900 i wonder "why are those forests still standing in that commerce-city's BFC?" and "why does this production city with 10 beakers have an observatory?"

- diplomacy;
--- beelining for some wonderfullly expensive tech and then forgetting to trade it with the AI
--- forgetting to trade resources alltogether
--- giving away techs to keep them pleased and then being DoW-ed 11 turns later by ALL of them :mad:

- war-time tunnelvision; "do you really think i'm bothered whether you stupid little filler city builds a forge or a library???"

- indecisiveness; to go to war, to beeline for spaceship, where to build some national wonders etc.

- and now i've come to think of it, most of the aspects mentioned by all of the above :D


great thread btw

every time in 1900 i wonder "why does this production city with 10 beakers have an observatory?
Because you need an Observatory to build a Laboratory, which is a key building in your Production cities for the Space Race.

Where to begin, where to begin...

Probably my biggest problem is that I'm not very good at adjusting my strategy to fit the map. I always run a FEUSS economy. I always expand peacefully until late renaissance. At this point, I usually invade someone and find myself at war until shortly after tanks. It's at about this point (shortly after tanks, that is) that I realize it's probably time for me to pick a victory condition. My victory condition usually ends up being either the UN or space race, because I took too long before I killed anyone.

My other big one would probably be poor army composition. I never bring enough siege, and I never bring enough city garrison, and I never bring enough stack defense. In other words, my armies are typically comprised of one sentry chariot, one medic chariot, a half dozen catapults or trebuchets, a pike or elephant, a couple of knights, and 15 damn city raider macemen. I know the importance of siege, but I always build the stupid maces thinking, "I won't have access to city raider again until tanks. I'd better stock up on maces so I can promote them to rifles." And then I research rifles, drop the slider to 0 for a turn or 2 if needed, promote a bunch of city raider 3 rifles, and find that all I have to guard all these cities I'm going to capture are a bunch of damn axemen I have left over from fog-busting in the BC's. So now every time I capture a city I have to sit and wait for some longbows to show up before I can go on to capture another city. One of these days I'll learn that city raider promotions are far less important once siege comes into play.

And for those who don't know, what is a FEUSS economy?

Free Emancipation Universal Sufferage Serfdom Speech economy.

New discovery after analyzing my game play a few times this past weekend. I have a huge problem with changing major goals in midstream. It goes like:

"Okay, lots of empty land, I'll REX."
"No, wait, they're boxing me in already, need to go for early war."
"No, hold on, I've got marble and stone, let's wonder-whore a bit."
"SWEET! Captured a shrine! Let's forget everything else and religion-spam and switch to a half-@ssed RE for a while!"

I end up everywhere and nowhere, strategically, epic fail.

New discovery after analyzing my game play a few times this past weekend. I have a huge problem with changing major goals in midstream. It goes like:

"Okay, lots of empty land, I'll REX."
"No, wait, they're boxing me in already, need to go for early war."
"No, hold on, I've got marble and stone, let's wonder-whore a bit."
"SWEET! Captured a shrine! Let's forget everything else and religion-spam and switch to a half-@ssed RE for a while!"

I end up everywhere and nowhere, strategically, epic fail.

Its that or great this strategy is working well. 2-3 Ai DOW you and you are building units for 10-15 turns while some ego minded Ai leader will only take peace till you hand over a city. Errrrr as if!!! By this time your economy is overly ruined and the far Ai amassing troops and teching fast is ready to attack you.

Surprise DOW to me is a sign that I've set myself up for failure in a particular game. If, for example, I was REXing, and didn't keep military production up enough to defend the REXed cities, an AI stack of doom will obliterate my ill thought out strategy and it's pull the plug time. Or if I wonder-spammed and allowed a city too weak in production to be the unit pump (hogging the higher prod cities for wonder builds). Same thing. Survival might be within reach from there, but not "victory".

I had two or three awesome starts this weekend and I ended up losing them because I failed at war.

I had Pericles with marble, about 6 to 8 cities, parthenon, HE and 1 turn elephants, etc. I even had CoL and currency to back it up. I attacked Hattie and did a lousy job of taking and holding her cities. I ended up abandoning because it was getting to be 800 to 1000 AD and it felt like it was taking too long.

Then I had Abe with a similar decent early rex, 6 to 8 cities. I did 1 medeval war on Sitting Bull and took 2 of his cities. 10 turns later I DoW again and we are at parity. I end up losing the 2 cities I took last time and even failing to take the city I marched on.

It gets frustrating wasting such good setups.

I had two or three awesome starts this weekend and I ended up losing them because I failed at war.

I had Pericles with marble, about 6 to 8 cities, parthenon, HE and 1 turn elephants, etc. I even had CoL and currency to back it up. I attacked Hattie and did a lousy job of taking and holding her cities. I ended up abandoning because it was getting to be 800 to 1000 AD and it felt like it was taking too long.

Then I had Abe with a similar decent early rex, 6 to 8 cities. I did 1 medeval war on Sitting Bull and took 2 of his cities. 10 turns later I DoW again and we are at parity. I end up losing the 2 cities I took last time and even failing to take the city I marched on.

It gets frustrating wasting such good setups.

Rule of thumb on wars.

1. Always take a decent sized stack that will do the job.
2. Always have a plan how you are gonna roll over the defenders. Spies/cats/trebs etc.
3. Make sure the Ai doesnt have a larger stack that will take your stack out.
4. Why did you dow if your military is too weak to take the AI on anyway?

Fun fun fun

Diplomacy and Espionage. I can usually make a couple of fast friends in my games, but if you are facing 10+ AIs, that is neither hard, nor good enough. I have never bothered or learned how to get an aggressive AI to war for me, for example. And I probably don't give gifts and accede to demands enough.

As for espionage, I primarily use it to see what my opponents are researching and their military strength. Everything else is done haphazardly.

I do specialize my cities a lot better than I used to, thanks to tips I got here. I think the key is accepting that there are seldom "perfect" sites for a commerce city, military pump city, GP farm, etc. Find the best site you can, and get the infrastructure (cottages, library, farms, forge, as the case may be) up as fast as you can. No point in finding the perfect GP farm in 1050 AD.

Non spiritual leaders and my lack of swapping civics. Spiritual is by far my favorite trait in a leader and without it I too often find myself thinking "I can't waste that turn now I need to get X done first". Then it is 1000BC, I have not swapped to slavery, and am thinking to myself "why the hell is my army so small" or something of that ilk. Also the standard poor National Wonder planning.

What has really helped me with these bone headed moves is simply keeping a running log in word of what significant stuff happened that turn. The first time (only a week or so ago) I decided to post my proceedings on a game on this forum I realized that in taking notes on the game to post later I was questioning my builds and strategies much much more. I attribute this entirely to jumping up from a shaky Noble to a comfortable Emperor. I found myself asking things such as, "well you want to beeline rifling so where is your globe theater going dummy, you've had Drama for 15 turns". It slows the game down A LOT at first, but forces me to think. I see it akin to reading my game aloud, letting me realize that something is just not right much faster.

4. Why did you dow if your military is too weak to take the AI on anyway?

Fun fun fun


What I have been doing lately is building a force of about 6 axemen and using them to take any barb cities. They might get 2 or 3. Meanwhile I have been teching to Const and switching builds to cats. Then I am 'ready'.

I will have a stack of six axes, maybe a spear and a couple swords and 3 or 4 cats. Those two games I metnioned even had elephants. This force is good enough to roll over 1 or 2 border cities, but I never risk a pitched battle to finnish off ai SODs.

To back this first stack up, I will have one good prodution city, plus my capitol and they will spam units. The developing 3 or 4 cites contribute troops more slowly as they can. And this is all done without whipping.

Thats how I approach the 'sword rush' wars. I think I have 2 probles; not enough men and poor tactical decisions on exactly which tile to move on and fight from.

Well I suppose my real weaknesses I might not even know about.

Sometimes I haven't read the fine print, or deducted enough from the fine print of the civilopedia. I didn't know that National Park eats away at 50% of Ironworks. I didn't know that the assembly plant is built at 1/2 speed with coal. I didn’t know that Conquistadors and Immortals DO receive defense bonuses. What else do I not know?

I find diplomacy commitments can be tricky. Some posters here exploit them well, not so much this guy. I try to stay quasi faithful to 1 or 2 AIs but even then I don't go all out usually. "Adopt Theocracy." "No." "Can we have Assembly Line?" "No." "Stop selling your spare fur to X for 20 gold a turn." "No. (Don't you see I'm making a dent in his science and espionage by this trade? You should be thanking me.)"
I sometimes find it hard to predict who's worth appeasing and who's not. The religious ones can be nice, they're pretty straight forward. Be their brothers in faith and it's all good. Brenus, Justinian. Izzy. Then there's the chill folks who trade techs and are unlikely to declare war, Pacal, Mansa, Roosevelt, Wilhelm. I handle them well too. The blatantly aggressive ones are to be taken out if they're next to you. The rest (examples - Joao, Peter, Qin, Mao, Zara) I don't know what to do with. Still, I must do OK at it as I've won UN head and AP head a few times and pulled off a few diplomatic hustles.

I don't specialize cities enough. In my defense though, there is often not an obvious best candidate for a GP farm. I do my capital as science, a GP farm, my 2nd or 3rd most productive becomes my HE, financial capital is a shrine city (usually I have one.) Espionage cities...never had one. How can one specialize all their cities on a standard map? Every coastal city tempts me to build naval units. But building a custom house is also tempting. All these filler cities need to build banks when I want Wall Street and Unis when I want Oxford and I want them to help out with the military too and I want them to help out with espionage as well with the espionage buildings.

I don't plan for national wonders sometimes.
- Oh s_____ it's 1400 and I never went to war, wasn't focused enough when combating barbs. I still can't build HE. Guess I'll have spill some blood now. But to prepare for that now it would be easier with HE. Gosh darn it all. (In my defense, the continent was huge – I boxed in the AIs and was busy expanding peacefully.)
- All right corporation, time for Wall Street. Oh joy, 4 more banks to build before that happens.

Some people do very impressive things with espionage. I just use counter espionage, mess up buildings for cultural threats, mess up a space part if I have to. I have used them a few times for revolt invasions but not often. I'm usually reluctantly catching up in EP. I hate putting up the slider before passive buildings like Jail, Security Bureau etc. help it along. For this reason I’m a fan of the internet. Put science way down and catch up on EP and money (to be used to update the military to exclusively the most modern units.)

Definitely one of the harder ones is getting enough banks for Wall Street. Sometimes I just plain don't have enough commerce cities where banks would be on-spec, so I have to "cheat" and put them in the build queue of unit pumps or the IW city. Just to open up WS.

Then my save games get critiqued to death for "building unnecessary buildings", blah blah blah...

Definitely one of the harder ones is getting enough banks for Wall Street. Sometimes I just plain don't have enough commerce cities where banks would be on-spec, so I have to "cheat" and put them in the build queue of unit pumps or the IW city. Just to open up WS.

Then my save games get critiqued to death for "building unnecessary buildings", blah blah blah...
I definitely have the "where do I build the necessary banks" issue, in every game that lasts that long.
My way to solve this issue is to run a few turns at 100% gold and universal suffrage (goes well with a golden age), and rush all the money improvers I need.
Often I don't go back to an other civic, but it's still an option if you start the banks before going into US and pile a bit of gold before switching.

I just did the math. I would need 12 cities to leverage all the national wonders without making any cities build off-spec. 6 of them generic commerce building both science and gold multipliers, which to some purists is itself off-spec. To rigidly follow pure spec, that makes it an 18 city requirement.

Maybe on a huge map there might be a ghost of a prayer to specialize.

Free Emancipation Universal Sufferage Serfdom Speech economy.

All right, I understand favoring Free Speech and Universal Suffrage. Does this mean you switch between Serfdom to get cottage tiles and Emancipation to build them up?

My weakness?

Early MM.

I play a lot of games where the persons start of the same starting spot and I've seen certain forum players grabbing 2 wonders and making 4 cities in 50 turns, in a situation where I putted 2 cities out and no wonders :faint:

I normally play a lot of catch up ( in that part I'm quite good ) and that masks the early MM issue. If I was better in that, I would be one level above of where I am ( Immortal ATM )

Who manages to get two wonders and four cities in the first 50? I need a link to see this one!

Who manages to get two wonders and four cities in the first 50? I need a link to see this one!
well, build a few quechuas and capture 3 cities, with 2 of them from industrious AIs ;)

well, build a few quechuas and capture 3 cities, with 2 of them from industrious AIs ;)

the weakest part of my game is knowing how many "a few" really is. i like to feel prepared, so i wait way way too long to start my wars. then when i do go to war, it's often easier than i thought it would be and i realize i should have declared earlier. do i learn a lesson for next time? no, because i'm scared again next time too! one of these days...

edit for cabert: the giggling is what keeps me playing even when i do badly at wars ;)

the weakest part of my game is knowing how many "a few" really is. i like to feel prepared, so i wait way way too long to start my wars. then when i do go to war, it's often easier than i thought it would be and i realize i should have declared earlier. do i learn a lesson for next time? no, because i'm scared again next time too! one of these days...
what? no gigling? ;)

It's better to overbuild for war rather than under, the sole exception being waiting until the enemy gets a new military tech that makes the war markedly harder. So, with quechas, hit before they hook up metal. With rifles, do try to hit prior to military science or rifling for them.

If time permits, mass up enough military to take all of their cities without stopping after cleaning out their invasion SoD they'll send after you declare.

Hi

Wow Kmad is back yay!! :) These boards always nicer when you see her funny posts and giggles int he threads :)

Kaytie

If time permits, mass up enough military

that's it right there! when i'm starting a war, i struggle with the balance between "more troops is better" and "striking sooner is better." i never think i have enough! maybe i can find a mod that'll nag me to declare before i think i'm ready ;)

awww thanks Kaytie but i'm more a permanoob than ever before, i'm way out of practice now! for playing anyway ... still full of *giggles* :)

Welcome back, KMad!

Who manages to get two wonders and four cities in the first 50? I need a link to see this one!

well, build a few quechuas and capture 3 cities, with 2 of them from industrious AIs ;)

It was peacefully, Cabert. I still must find the link, but I can tell the player: a certain well known poster that makes very small posts, sometimes with only one word. Ah and he loves to use a certain improvement that Obsolete shuns :p

Oh, I forgot : *giggle* :p

It was peacefully, Cabert. I still must find the link, but I can tell the player: a certain well known poster that makes very small posts, sometimes with only one word. Ah and he loves to use a certain improvement that Obsolete shuns

You never seem him post summaries, and then just when you start to doubt, he turns up in a cookbook game and runs a keshik tornado that puts me to shame!

that's it right there! when i'm starting a war, i struggle with the balance between "more troops is better" and "striking sooner is better."

You missed that "to take all of their cities without stopping after cleaning out their invasion SoD" part. Anything past that is definite overbuild. Declaring before that is a function of when you judge they'll advance, and is dependent on factors ranging from who is willing to trade with that AI to its own tech rate, as well as how many cities it has/how long it will take to kill...of course the units it builds during the war are relevant too.

As long as you can cut down most of its production base in the first push though, it's ok to bring reinforcements with steady production if you can keep yourself from being dogpiled. It's all a judgment thing :lol:. But hell, I'm not perfect there either, and my lack of willingness to plan for a long time or stop calculate optimal choices hinders me even here - I eyeball it, but it should be possible to get much closer approximations by actually doing a little math :p.

In the quest to fix my early game woes, I've located one of the main problems. Monarchy. I always seem to pick the wrong way to deal with it. When I research it myself, everyone has it. When I tech something else to trade, they take forever to research it and I find myself stagnating my capital at 6 pop.

So I usually have a hard time choosing between:
- Go straight for it myself.
- Research pre-reqs and trade for monarchy.
- Trade for pre-reqs and monarchy.

I guess at Immortal they research it 100% of the times and you are sure to get it via trades. But it's not the case on Emperor.

Woohoo! KMad's here! :goodjob:

I figured out one part of my game that needs improvement - something I almost never do is fully micro everything in war. I rarely find myself getting a medic 3 unit, and I often just promote guys right as they're built, when it would probably be better to save promotions to heal. But this is mostly in later-era wars (the ones I find myself in more on the maps I play) so I usually just do enough to win the war and hence the game and ignore details. (like also preventing enemies from pillaging my boats... never bother with this enough).

KMad is back!!!

:banana:

Where have you been girl???

that's it right there! when i'm starting a war, i struggle with the balance between "more troops is better" and "striking sooner is better." i never think i have enough! maybe i can find a mod that'll nag me to declare before i think i'm ready ;)


My instinct errs on the side of "overpreparation", but there's a gut feeling I get when I'm "ready". That feeling is influenced by who any of my other neighbors are and how likely they would be to backstab/dogpile against me (and if I'm prepared for that with defenders); my ability to smack down the enemy's offensive stack that they'll bring when I declare (cav type units for days! And the survivors then become another attack stack); the overall composition of my CGs everywhere (obsolete or up to date?); and the composition of my attack stack itself (Enough siege? Enough stack defenders? Enough melee? Did I remember to include a MEDIC?)

By the time all of that is warm and fuzzy for me, it's right around the gunpowder era or early rifling (and by then I've got my GT drafting city ready to go, and my HE/Moai coastal city pumping at a good clip).

It's easiest when the AI makes that decision for you. Who am I going to invade? Well, Shaka just sent a stack of 15 at me, so I guess I better handle him first...

Playing much past Liberalism. My focus is always on meticulous build orders directed at specific goals. Sure the land changes but after playing tooooo many games you can look at your surroundings and already know which build order will work best for your circumstances. From their it becomes reaction and execution, and for me, shortly after Liberalism is where the game ends. I already know if I'm in a winning position by then so don't play further.

So the worst part of my game would have to be late game tech because I rarely do it.

Weakness = Using mounted units

I don't think I've ever used mounted units in my entire CIV IV career. Maybe 1 or 2 chariots.

Weakness = Using mounted units

I don't think I've ever used mounted units in my entire CIV IV career. Maybe 1 or 2 chariots.

Whaaa, do immortals not count? :-D

I used to hate using mounted for anything because of the AI's use of pikemen, but I'm finding the value of Flanking II in an initual "possible suicide" squad of cavs, especially in field combat. Follow that up with the regular melee/gunpowder attacks for easy annihilation of enemy stacks.

that's it right there! when i'm starting a war, i struggle with the balance between "more troops is better" and "striking sooner is better." i never think i have enough! maybe i can find a mod that'll nag me to declare before i think i'm ready ;)

awww thanks Kaytie but i'm more a permanoob than ever before, i'm way out of practice now! for playing anyway ... still full of *giggles* :)

A> Privateers do not count as troops.
B> The reason the war seems easier than you thought is because of the way you prepared for it. I would rather have the troops and not need them than need the troops and not have them.
C> Overpreparing for war means a nice healthy power-rating. Thiis makes it less likely for your victim to be able to bribe someone into the war.

Getting mobilized for a war. I'm incredibly impatient when it comes to that, so I often start wars too early, which usually results in a stalemate and a pyhiric victory.

i use an exploit where manually popping a hut and using auto-explore may yield different results. it doesn't work all the time, and it's not like i camp out by huts, but it's still cheating. reloading at all is cheating, but sometimes i will go back 2 turns if i realized that i missed something nearly inconsequential, like i ended a worker on a plains w/o starting a road instead of a forrest or hill. so i micromanage a lot, and it makes my games take forever. i play rather slowly because i don't have a good system for checking all the cities on every turn, like using a simple check-list and the f1 screen.

@ DMOC: here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=313466), a spirited discussion on mounted units.

1. Diplomacy
2. Diplomacy
3. Diplomacy
..... you see where I'm headed.

Seriously, the single weakest part of my game is "managing" the AIs. I suck at tech trading-- I don't even really know what "tech brokering" is supposed to mean. My only diplomatic win surprised me- and it's still my earliest non-military win. I do not have the cold-bloodedness to ignore slights, and only very recently have DoW'd a friendly AI because he was the only one left between me and a conquest victory.

I know there are oodles of guides on diplomatic wins. It's the discipline to say, time to figure that out. Maybe next vacation, I'll convince my wife that spending five days in my study with the lights down low is what I really need to "recharge."

overexpanding; it's a drawback I got from marathon where you had to block very early( ~1.5kbc - 4-5 cities with something to backfill). And man, despite I know it's better to swarm in rene, I still overexpand the crap out of it and take off late(I'm just playing a willy oranje where I have 8 more slots to settle only on my continent - plus some at astro - already settled 12, would've been easier to capture them with infra already in place and someone else paying the initial costs - half the game I've built settlers)...

My chief weakness is spending so much time on forums that i run out of time to play.

CivCorpse - That sounds strangely familiar :)

But since these forums helped me realise many things I had overlooked and helped me diversify my gameplay instead of simply refining the strategy I was most comfortable with, it's definitely worth it.

My weakness, it tech trading, I absolutely am pathetic at it, I constantly forget to trade away a tech, I've gotten to Monarch on a strategy of NO TECH TRADING.

Now I'm trying Emperor, and I need to trade tech's, yes I don't get full value for money, but got to do what you've got to do, I still 'forget' to trade tech's, or broker them about.

Currently playing a huge map game, I've tried to keep up the tech trading, but still forgetting.

That, and giving up too easily.

Getting discouraged by AI higher in score or ahead in techs. I feel so vulnerable when the AI has a solid tech advantage. I usually choose whether or not to stick with my current game in such cases. It's a huge fallacy since I can only get better by continuing on.

Developing a smart strategy that is feasible. Sometimes you start off in a position to plop down two cities and make a rush, I can manage that. Sometimes you can expand to 5 cities and build some wonders. I can do that. Sometimes you get combinations of both, or situations where you could capitalize on a lot of worker techs while at the same time you might need a religion for lack of culture, an army for defense, some wonders for a longer term strategy, etc....

Sometimes you get really great starts where you could do a lot, and I often try to do all of it, and in the end the result is that AI settled cities in land that I was too slow to grab because my cities were building wonders, and they just lost the race and now that iron working has been researched I realize I have no copper or iron.

Another problem I have is not bringing defenders for captured cities during war. This slows down the war while other cities then produce those defenders and the assault force sits and waits for backup.

and they just lost the race and now that iron working has been researched I realize I have no copper or iron.

That sucks. I've never had a no-copper no-iron combo. This is why I only build the wonders that I specifically need for the strategy I've laid out. IE if there's tons of food in my local area, I'll try for the Pyramids so I can run a strong specialist economy. If there's lots of coastal tiles, I'll strive for the Great Lighthouse. Etc

Micro, I prefer to play at a relatively fast pace. I just let the city managers do their jobs.

Diplomacy, I can't stand the idea of Kowtowing to the AI even if I'm outnumbered. Too often this results in having more enemies than friends.

Focus, my games often lack a definitive goal from the start. I just play the map.

Focus, my games often lack a definitive goal from the start. I just play the map.

You don't really need much of a definitive goal in the beginning. Playing the map is what usually works best. I generally have a victory goal when coming out of the medieval era or in the mid-late Renaissance depending on if I'm going for domination or something else :D

I usually have a victory goal when I have scouted all of the land mass and see what all AIs I'm dealing with at that point. If it ain't a pangea I usually pick space race simply because it's draining and tedious to manage oversea wars.

Diplomacy and Espionage. I can usually make a couple of fast friends in my games, but if you are facing 10+ AIs, that is neither hard, nor good enough. I have never bothered or learned how to get an aggressive AI to war for me, for example. And I probably don't give gifts and accede to demands enough.

As for espionage, I primarily use it to see what my opponents are researching and their military strength. Everything else is done haphazardly.

I do specialize my cities a lot better than I used to, thanks to tips I got here. I think the key is accepting that there are seldom "perfect" sites for a commerce city, military pump city, GP farm, etc. Find the best site you can, and get the infrastructure (cottages, library, farms, forge, as the case may be) up as fast as you can. No point in finding the perfect GP farm in 1050 AD.

I should add something else, much more general: I need to put the hammer down on my AI opponents more. I tend to dawdle too much when in a winning position in the later game, and let my opponents get too close to culture/space/nukes, when the game shouldn't even have been close.

I usually have a victory goal when I have scouted all of the land mass and see what all AIs I'm dealing with at that point. If it ain't a pangea I usually pick space race simply because it's draining and tedious to manage oversea wars.

That's prolly why I wait until mid-late Renaissance Era to pick my victory condition. I like a variety of wins (except time! :mad:). It depends on the world situation and at that point, I'm pretty sure if I'll be warring, diplomating ;), culture hording, or ahead enough in techs to grab a space victory.

I rarely know what I'm going to try to win with as early as scouting the landmass. Do you play random maps?

I am pretty good at selecting the right wonders to build. If I think I can get it, I try to put great wall down in one city only so I can run an espionage game. If I can do specialist, I go for Pyramids. If I have an otherwise good shot at it (industrious, stone) I still go for mids. If I can do coastal, it's GLH and Colossus. I usually skip oracle and stonehenge because I avoid the early religion techs.

Some starts are less likely to find copper and iron, like if you're in the tropics surrounded by jungle (at least on fractal it seems this way). I don't like settling far away cities, makes the empire hard to maintain, I usually do a spoke wheel setup.

That's prolly why I wait until mid-late Renaissance Era to pick my victory condition. I like a variety of wins (except time! :mad:). It depends on the world situation and at that point, I'm pretty sure if I'll be warring, diplomating ;), culture hording, or ahead enough in techs to grab a space victory.

I rarely know what I'm going to try to win with as early as scouting the landmass. Do you play random maps?

I can often choose between the Diplomacy/Space Race/Conquest/Domination, but I always figured I was too late to start hoarding for a Culture win in the late Medieval or early Renaissance period.

Generally, it's Domination. I just counted up my BtS score charts...and I have about 50% Domination, 15% Conquest, 15% Diplomacy, 10% Culture, 10% Space Race. I've decided to force my current two games as Space Race and Culture just to buff those sections up. :)

1. Delaying National Wonders. National Epic gets built way too late. I am usually better with Oxford. Moai Statutes might be nice here, but maybe I will take a city from an enemy that will be better? Or do I want to build National Epic here? What about Oxford?

2. Previously, not building enough early military units was a problem. After playing Raging Barbs for a while, I seem to have solved that problem.

3. I tend to wait to be attacked, but that is somewhat deliberate. I will only attack if I need a key resource or if I am blocked.

4. I stop the game because I have trouble finding the right level of challenge. I was playing Raging barbs for a while, and if I found Bronze in the fat cross, I would restart because it was too easy.

1. Delaying National Wonders. National Epic gets built way too late. I am usually better with Oxford. Moai Statutes might be nice here, but maybe I will take a city from an enemy that will be better? Or do I want to build National Epic here? What about Oxford?

could be me :blush:

2. Previously, not building enough early military units was a problem. After playing Raging Barbs for a while, I seem to have solved that problem.

playing HoF with barbs off for a while as made this into a problem for me, when I don't play HoF with barbs off

3. I tend to wait to be attacked, but that is somewhat deliberate. I will only attack if I need a key resource or if I am blocked.

really?
what about damn neighbour, you're walking on my lawn.
OK, you planted those things, butt I have the feeling they belong to me.

4. I stop the game because I have trouble finding the right level of challenge. I was playing Raging barbs for a while, and if I found Bronze in the fat cross, I would restart because it was too easy.
Play a higher level then.
Or are you playing deity already?
I like an easy game every now and then. Or more often than that.

It seems a lot of people have problems with early micromanagement. Seems weird to me because this is probably what I'm best at.

1. I generally suck economically from currency --> civil service. I crash my Econ hard. If I can keep science above 20-30% I'm doing good, though usually spend some time around 0% building research. Most likely because I build too little cottages (a lot of the time none) and too much production.

2. Diplomacy is so-so.

3. Using religion. It seems like it could be really powerful but I never seem to use it much.

1. Classical era wars seeming to last until nearly the renaissance in actual year time (probably more of an AI/difficulty level thing)

2. Boring Modern era wars. Not enough crunchiness with the promotion tree and game rules in the modern era, IMHO.


I suppose I'm playing below my difficulty level.

1. Classical era wars seeming to last until nearly the renaissance in actual year time (probably more of an AI/difficulty level thing)

2. Boring Modern era wars. Not enough crunchiness with the promotion tree and game rules in the modern era, IMHO.


I suppose I'm playing below my difficulty level.

Modern era wars are too easy with cannons and artilleries.

1) Mid game warfare/expansion. There are so many universities, banks, and aquaducts to build i always end up putting off military.

2) Diplomacy. I'm good at tech trading, but that's about it.

1) Mid game warfare/expansion. There are so many universities, banks, and aquaducts to build i always end up putting off military.

You dont' have to build every building in every city. Cities that are not facing health problem don't require aqueducts in them. I never have a problem with health anyway. It's easy to deal with.

Using specialists, specializing cities, REXing ruthlessly enough are my weak points: for me, the game's builder aspects, the exploration, the identifying great city sites, strategic areas, seeing how and where everyone is are the fun parts. I'm not as much amused by the razing of cities, giant stacks of doom, weird and incompetent AI; I dislike their being given bonuses that force me to play like in a certain fashion just to defeat the AI's bonuses rather than its strategic acumen. But other than that, I love Civ IV!

You dont' have to build every building in every city. Cities that are not facing health problem don't require aqueducts in them. I never have a problem with health anyway. It's easy to deal with.

Just because you don't have to build everything in every city, doesn't mean people won't do it anyone.

Personally, it's one of the things I have to wrestle with most when playing If I start drifting through the game, all of a sudden it's the Industrial Era and I have no military to speak of beyond the leftover Medieval units I left sitting around.

Just because you don't have to build everything in every city, doesn't mean people won't do it anyone.

Personally, it's one of the things I have to wrestle with most when playing If I start drifting through the game, all of a sudden it's the Industrial Era and I have no military to speak of beyond the leftover Medieval units I left sitting around.

That exactly is the point. Why bother putting in buildings your city doesnt need at the moment? why not invest those valuable hammers into building something more worthwhile, such as building library, university and observatory in your science/commerce city? If that city has enough hammers, you can even use it to help you produce units. Otherwise, you can always turn it to building wealth.

I'm bad at timing things in my game, first war, expanding etc.

My Micro goes out of the window during a war. I'll spend ages making sure that each city is working the right tiles and specialists each turn. Then as soon as a war comes along my brain forgets that we are still turn based, even if we are at war and just shouts :mad::mad:BUILD MORE SWORDSMAN NOW YOU IDIOT:mad::mad: at me. By the end of the war I have unhappy, unheathly cities which I could have probably avoided, as well as I could have probable whipped more efficiently and ended up with more units.

i have that problem as well.

i manage my empire pretty well. taking the time to check each city and move around citizens, planning everything etc. etc.

but then war breaks out... and that all goes out the window.

That exactly is the point. Why bother putting in buildings your city doesnt need at the moment? why not invest those valuable hammers into building something more worthwhile, such as building library, university and observatory in your science/commerce city? If that city has enough hammers, you can even use it to help you produce units. Otherwise, you can always turn it to building wealth.

I know that, but when I'm playing almost everything seems useful to build in every city.

1. Early exploration.
2. Early growth.
3. National Wonders.

Basically, every point that KaytieKat posted on the first page could have been written by me. I suffer from every one of those.

I also never play enough. I'll get hooked on the game for a few weeks before getting sidetracked by something else and not come back to the game for a few months. This means I forget a lot of what I'd learned and start from scratch again. Probably the main reason I'm still on warlord difficulty :sad:

Attack Timing: Okay I'll declare on Lizzy after this Swordsman is finished. <waits a turn> Oh look another sword is just a turn a way better wait for that one. <construction's finished> Wait a minute, just teched construction might as well bring a few cats. <after building four cats> Oh damn she's teching feudalism :(.

I've only stolen a handful of technologies, and never early in the game (last game I got Theology and Aesthetics, I think).

I find that I either use Spies a whole lot or not at all. I think I should probably have more balance with this in my games. I do find that infiltrating a Great Spy in a leading opponent's city early in the game is absolutely abusive, however. Being able to beeline for whatever advanced tech I want while stealing all of the backfill techs I could possibly use (as well as some of the techs on that beeline path, often) makes my game pretty much an autowin.


I believe Slavery loses its effectiveness as the game progresses. After you have your courthouses established (and the game progresses into the Medieval Ages), your core cities should be running higher population to make use of multiple improved tiles and specialists, whichever you choose. I thought my friend was crazy when he told me he whipped a wonder for a cost of 12 population...just because he could.

I'll whip the heck out of a city if I'm trying to build Versailles or Forbidden Palace on a big new continent that I'm planning on swallowing, but I can't see whipping more than just a couple of population in any city for a wonder - even with the Kremlin.

I agree with you about Slavery. I finally figured out that Slavery's effectiveness comes from the fact that it gives you hammers that are worth more than mediocre tiles, but those hammers are not worth the cost of losing citizens that are working really good tiles. As the game progresses, more and more cities have lots of what you would consider "really good" tiles with increased city specialization and cottage growth, so Slavery becomes attractive only in new cities. Also, the things you are building take more and more hammers, so you have to sacrifice more and more hammers to get them. That's just not possible with tiny little new cities, so letting your empire as a whole drive the construction in individual cities becomes a lot more attractive ->Universal Sufferage.

My own biggest weakness is doing everything well at the same time. I can do lots of things well, but doing them all well at the same time just takes more focus and attention than I have available. If I replay the map, I have enough experience with that particular game, that I can absolutely rock the second game, but I just make boneheaded mistakes the first time through because I can't keep track of everything at the same time.

My own biggest weakness is doing everything well at the same time. I can do lots of things well, but doing them all well at the same time just takes more focus and attention than I have available. If I replay the map, I have enough experience with that particular game, that I can absolutely rock the second game, but I just make boneheaded mistakes the first time through because I can't keep track of everything at the same time.

That's a good description of my weakness. I learn so many good skillz from the high-level players on here, and I mentally "know" quite a bit, but when I actually play it's like juggling on a unicycle on a high wire. I forget half the good ideas I picked up in the forum, get frustrated, get angry, and then make even more mistakes. Or the map throws something at me that I don't know how to deal with based on walk-thrus and expert advice and I choke on that.

Like this past weekend I tried an Emperor game using advice I knew was sound, and I forgot to research Writing and my economy crashed, "600 turns to Currency"... BZZZZT... restart. I "mentally know" that Writing is key for the REX, have included it in a REX thousands of times, but that one time I forgot, simply because I was trying to pay attention to the other cool tricks I was picking up from the advice people gave me.

diplomacy. I work hard for everything in my empire. I can't stand giving handouts. And I don't take too well to threats.

Also espionage. I REALLY neglect this facet of the game. Although I'm ready to move up in difficulty, so I think I'll have to focus on it a little more now with the tech disadvantage I'm about to take on.

I never use slavery (unless I'm playing a warmonging leader like Shaka), and I always come up on top because of it (more population, more workers, more points he he he he ha ha ha ho ho hum)... ahem... I'm gonna have to say... war war war. If I'm left alone, I will dominate, but at the first sign of war, I either resign on a few turns later, or lose my cool and send my military on sudicidal trips, eventually resigning anyway. I'm not known (from family and friends) for my patience either, so after get DOWed on, I don't really have the patience see the end result.

I also hate micromangment but I do it anyway, dealing with workers' improvements is never, ever fun, especially when I have other more important matters to tend to. I'm almost positive (with the exception of major resource tiles) that I would make the exact same choices at the computer would make... so why would I even bother with the hassle while achieving the same result?

I either build too many units (slowing down my science (some newbies say that they can actually get ahead with 0% science but then I think they are just warmonging) and eventually losing on techs and getting DOWed on), or I don't build enough units (and getting DOWed on eventually).

But my worse flaw is running a specialist ecomony and figuring out what buildings and techs I need to achieve my victory. I either don't skip any techs or buildings, or ending up skipping a whole bunch of buildings and units and losing in the late game. Usually when I am playing a domination/conquest victory, I just build units and miltary buildings in all of my cities and skip everything else, while running a cultural victory, I wonder whore and focus on libraries/theatres and religious buildings and forget to build units. And nine times out of ten, I build units/buildings/wonders that have aboslutely no use for my goal (i.e., The Great Library for Ghangis Khan). In the end, I'm just delaying what I want to do with this game.

Don't get me started with diplomacy. I get DOWed on ALOT. And because of it, I ALWAYS resign. I never give into demands or threats, and I'm an isoloist and rarely never open my borders with anyone (like Tokugawa), unless they share the same religion with me. In the end I would end up with one or two allies, and ten or eleven enemies.

Edit: Overexpanding. I mean 12 cities by 1200 B.C.? What was I gonna say? Oh yeah. Waking up sleeping workers after a barbarian attack attempt.

Also espionage. I REALLY neglect this facet of the game. Although I'm ready to move up in difficulty, so I think I'll have to focus on it a little more now with the tech disadvantage I'm about to take on.

I'd say that's my drawback at the moment. I use espionage largely to see what is going on in other cities. I'm thinking of running high espionage and stealing a bunch of techs to see how that works.

Forgetting to use artist to pop my borders after COL is up there lately.

1) Addiction to creative. Simply cant imagine playing without early border pops
2) Building the Pyramids and forgetting to change Civs for few turns (I mean whats the point :lol:)
3) Not researching war tech for a long time like horse-riding and then get screwed when sudden war is declared
4) GP Micro
5) Not building enough cities. I never go for Dominion/conquest and I think 10 cities is more than enough
6) Being surrounded on all sides on Pangaea map :crazyeye:
7) Spying, rarely use it, in fact dont even know very well how it works. Game is complex enough for me right now :)
8) Not using chopping for anything other than wonders
9) Not using slavery to make troops
10) Not building enough troops
11) Diplomacy. I think Mansa Musa will never attack, hes a nice guy, even if he is cautious, then I find out otherwise, the hard way :lol:
12) Managing WS and Oxford, I usually start building my 3rd/4th library/bank after the wonders become available

Used to be war but I've polished that up a bit enough to win. I'd say my weakest part of my game is espionage. It's just not fun for me. Other than steal technology, I'd rather just send a stack to take the city rather than poison their water. I'd rather send a horse archer to pillage the mine the spend time building espionage points and sending a spy to do it.

I'd say the best part of my game is city planning. I find it enjoyable for some reason. I do get rather upset when there is one mountain tile in my other wise perfect commerce city. :(

(some newbies say that they can actually get ahead with 0% science but then I think they are just warmonging)

Its called running specialists and/or building research.

My weakness:
1. Neglecting militairy. Its a rookie mistake I still sometimes make when I have pretty land to cultivate.
2. Giving the finger in diplo to often.
3. Getting a little sh*tfaced and after an hour or 2 thinking "what was i doing again?" and going to sleep, abandoning the game, or even totally forgetting about it and starting a new one couple of days later. And doing it again.

I expand less than I could mid-game. Once I have my empire set up with due attention to the economy and military, I don't settle the secondary sites as much as I could/should.

In the last month I have filled a LOT of holes in my game. Currently my weakest parts:

*Knowledge of AI leaders. From XMLs things like who will declare at pleased and who won't, extensive knowledge of their willingness to trade techs, etc. I find this should be more important for things like if I scout my continent and see Roosvelt + Hammurabi as the only AIs how easily can I tech trade verse researching my own. I know the leaders at either end of the extremes (Ragnor/Shaka/JC/Gengis for war, etc) but its the 'average' leaders that I forget. Who builds less units out of Roosvelt and Surry and Victoria??

*Espionage. The most useful thing I have here is that if I think I will need to attack with swords early I swap my EP allocation very very early so I can revolt the cities in my first wartarget to nullify cultural defenses. Apart from that next to nothing besides watching what techs my biggest rivals are teching towards for trading purposes.

my weak parts :
1. Spying
2. War - im a peaceful leader :P
3. and all those things written above :P microman. , forgot to wake units , change civics etc etc .

its a miracle i can even play this game and not lose for first 15 turns :P

Everything? xD My primary problem is learning how to wage war effectively right now, and how to best manage SE economies. I always wait just a little too long to strike, making sure I have, say, fifteen Axes as opposed to ten, and that just lets them build just enough defense to mess up my whole attack.

Everything? xD My primary problem is learning how to wage war effectively right now...
Ranfal, don't feel bad, I've got the same problems. What is SE (I'm new)?

I'm pretty inexperienced in CIV IV, but my MAJOR problems are:
1) Neglecting a military
2) Struggling to make money (I'm pretty much in red until modern/industrial unless I get loads of GrP's* to boost my financial base)
3) Microing. I suck at it. Can someone please explain?
*Great Prophet

What is SE (I'm new)?

you will encounter lots of (to quote Rolo) alphabet soup.

SE stands for Specialist Economy, which basically means running a lot of specialists (scientists mostly). the counterpart is usually CE where you have a lot of cottages instead.

Enter TheMeInTeam saying its all a bunch of crap, and it doesnt mean anything. He is right too, but thats another thread.

Its called running specialists and/or building research.

That's good for 3-4 turns if youre building up wealth to upgrade your units, but NEVER a wise or even smart permement strategy. I once learned about having the Internet and running at 0% science, but if I ran at 0% the while game I might as well forfeit now and save the hours of useless playing.

I rarely never REX if my science meter is below 60%. I learned my lesson not to overREX and criple my ecomony. At high levels (Prince and beyond), you litterly lost the game if you can barely keep up an income at 40%.

Believe me. I know. I never won a game with my science meter steadily below 40% at Noble and above.

That's good for 3-4 turns if youre building up wealth to upgrade your units, but NEVER a wise or even smart permement strategy. I once learned about having the Internet and running at 0% science, but if I ran at 0% the while game I might as well forfeit now and save the hours of useless playing.

who are you for saying this?
aren't you the guy who keep saying noble is impossible, and doesn't read the advice he gets?

If you run 0% science but have 24 scientists (not really a lot) and are running representation, you make 24 x 6 beakers = 144 beakers. this isn't ridiculous while warring.

I rarely never REX if my science meter is below 60%. I learned my lesson not to overREX and criple my ecomony. At high levels (Prince and beyond), you litterly lost the game if you can barely keep up an income at 40%.

Believe me. I know. I never won a game with my science meter steadily below 40% at Noble and above.
I have won loads of games where I was running 0% science for a few turns.
monarch and above...
believe who you want

That's good for 3-4 turns if youre building up wealth to upgrade your units, but NEVER a wise or even smart permement strategy. I once learned about having the Internet and running at 0% science, but if I ran at 0% the while game I might as well forfeit now and save the hours of useless playing.

I rarely never REX if my science meter is below 60%. I learned my lesson not to overREX and criple my ecomony. At high levels (Prince and beyond), you litterly lost the game if you can barely keep up an income at 40%.

Believe me. I know. I never won a game with my science meter steadily below 40% at Noble and above.

My best immortal game my slider didn't go above 10% research from VERY early on. A 300-400 A.D. domination win from an ordinary (though Sumerian :P) start. A lot of my early research is powered through specialists combined with building research. Only after my happy cap allows size 10+ cities do my cottages take over and my slider slowly starts to rise.

Basically in my best games I delibratly crash my economy hard then build it back.

I never expand enough. My current game (can't remember the leader) I've only got three cities (albeit, three amazing cities) but the only land is on another landmass. Diplomacy is great, 6/8 civs are Pleased or Friendly (Rome is Friendly :o) and I've Micro-Managed well. :D

Concentration. I will do some things right, but I cannot concentrate on a final goal, and will end up, after playing for about 30 minutes, just randomly clicking options in the build list or the tech tree.

My best immortal game my slider didn't go above 10% research from VERY early on. A 300-400 A.D. domination win from an ordinary (though Sumerian :P) start. A lot of my early research is powered through specialists combined with building research. Only after my happy cap allows size 10+ cities do my cottages take over and my slider slowly starts to rise.

Basically in my best games I delibratly crash my economy hard then build it back.

Agreed.

I just moved up from prince to noble, and I'm having an ok time of it. I spent a lot longer on prince than I could have simply because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of micro, the SE, slavery, and cycling your civics for periods of peace and war.

I think for the biggest challenge in moving up in levels is the courage to take a chance at a strategy you've never tried before. If you miss, you miss, but you learn from the effort. Before running an SE, I would have been terrified of seeing a 10% science rate, or risking a strike, or seeing the incredible amount of time it was going to take me to get to CoL, but now, seeing my empire limp to confucianism is a standard part of the early game.

I just moved up from prince to noble,

think you mean it the other way around :)

think you mean it the other way around :)

Actually, I meant prince to monarch, but it's still wrong.... :(

1. WarfareI can't seem to bother microing the most out of my cities, especially during wars. When I'm fighting, I'm always focusing on my armies, so I guess I'm more of a soldiers' king. :D I take care of my stacks and even occasionally set up scout promoted HA's and stuff like that so I can better conserve my units and conquer. Where does this lead to?

I end up having all my reinforcements in the cities, I mean... can you set up waypoints or something, to bring em forward? :eek:




2. City Specialization I don't know how to do city specialization, I think the hardest part for me is to get good production cities up and producing units in mid game.

The balance between food and hammers, so hard to achieve is http://www.millan.net/minimations/smileys/yoda1.gif

I mean my best production city was once when I played as Incans, I had factory, Three Gorges Dam, Ironworks, and all the jazz, including either West Point or Heroic Epic, cant remember. In any case I was churning out space ship parts like crazy. Thats how I won that game as well, I ended up churning nukes out of that city once the SS was complete so I basically sent a grand FU! message to all the AIs, before venturing to Alpha Centauri. :lol:

I maybe tend to focus too much on lowering maintenance and trying to get libs up and going. I don't know really, I tend to have very few if any specifically production dedicated cities... Once draft becomes available, together with rifling, its no biggie of course but still. I always build courthouses so thats not a bad strategy I think.

3. Diplomacy I suck epicly at this. My diplomacy is mostly basically about trying to rex myself in to favorable positions while blocking AIs into small peninsulas while taking all the good land for myself, including critical resources. I tend to send the foreign diplomats home empty handed every time they come asking open borders. I mean isn't that the whole point of rexing, to block the enemy from settling anywhere? :mischief:

This is maybe another problem. I rex as any possible civ when I'm playing, from the get-go. I tend to get dowed by monty or shaka, but thankfully axes/maces pwn monty's jaguars at least.

4.0 My latest game (as Romans/Julius, Big and Small, Epic, Noble)
However I ended up in a really weird situation in my last game. I had my own continent, a fairly big, the biggest. No other civs there (I prat-rushed Yanks). I dowed and razed cities everytime someone tried to set foot on my island. Ethiopia was the strongest rival, and Joao too, I was equal in score with Ethiopia but Joao was significantly weaker, I had a score at the 3000s.

4.1
There were lots of vassals around, In fact the free world consisted of me, Ragnar and Stalin (both stuck at middle ages). I saw the danger in this, Ragnar had warred against me but was by now a nuisance, just like Stalin whose armies were mainly swords. I had beelined Assembly Line and as such I was building elite infantry from Washington.

4.2
So I decided that since Joao had 4 fairly weak vassals, and Zara(whoever the Ethiopia guy is called) had 3 I think, I MUST have teh vassals as well. I embarked on an epic streak of conquest to put an end to the Viking nuisance. I captured Nidaros and vassalised them.
Then I did what all the great leaders always had done, invaded Russia.:goodjob: Of course my 20-ish infantry plus cannons would own them pretty good, I also had a real good casus belli this time, I was beelining to industrialism, and I was pretty close, finished the tech and I only needed combustion to get tanks. I had no oil on my continent though, so I decided to take all of Stalin's. :mischief:
I took what I wanted, even got a free city with uranium as well (so I had the capacity for uranium and oil once the rebels were quelled) reducing Stalin and his cronies to 3-city vassal nations just like the vikings.

4.3
At this point the whole world declared war on me, I dragged on, even changed back to nationhood and drafted my way out of the danger and crushed all invasion forces that had landed. Oh btw I didn't have a navy at all, I didn't get Astronomy until very late, and Joao had destroyers already so I didnt bother with combat ships at all. My navy consisted of 2 galleons for obvious single turn transport duties between Ragnar's & Stalin's continent, and my continent.

The war dragged on, and they wouldn't just give up. I would have had to give them cities which they never could have taken by their fairly inferior land forces.
I went totally bankrupt and my units went on strike. I disbanded all my obsolete maces & L-bows & archers & axes and even rifles. Still I could only stay on the positive per turn income by stalling my research at 10% with 4gold/turn. *sad face* :sad:

4.4
I did have huge unhappiness problems from this WW-style engagement (I didn't have the awesome police state or pyramids). Ethiopia / Portugal ruled the seas and razed all my water improvements. I had for some reason HUGE food problems, all my cities were starving and unhappy. But I think Ethiopia was also facing huge restraints on its teching, they had a far flung colonial empire on some of the very remote islands on top of their smaller continent, which was horrible in terms of terrain, pretty much half of it was tundra. They had lots of small cities on horrible locations as well.


5.0 Navies should be obvious already but my navy always sux big-time. I tend to get the enemy invasion forces on my shores, and not the other way around. Naval invasions tend to save time as well, reducing the amount of walking to the city walls? In any case I only build a few galleys early game if I must, e.g. if I'm isolated on an island or something.

Mid game naval vessels pretty much suck, caravels are only good for exploring and I always get beaten to the circumnavigation bonus, so why bother at all?

Astronomy and fregates come so late and are easily obsoleted by ironclads, and ironclads are easily obsolete by destroyers... Upgrading is expensive and I have other uses for my money than upgrading triremes to something useful. So all in all my navies tend to consist of just galleons doing 1-turn dashes across continents to the safety of cities.

the weakest part of my game seems to be playing on mp and making opponents quit and cry home to mama a bit too quickly.

that and perhaps the beauty of what is built could look better graphically-more of a balance via composition.

the build isn't for yeild- rather display, which alleviates the rather silly notions of cottage or farms or economies. this is the superior

hey troy, i will be happy to lay a whooping down on you anytime ;)

#1 Using the terrain I get: I almost always regenerate/restart until I get good terrain.

#2 Finishing a "losing game" (not a great victory) where I still have something to learn. Once I lose track of the game I restart over and over again...

My problem used to be warfare, but now I play when I'm grumpy. Problem solved. :lol:

My biggest problem now is espionage. I'm often the victim, and I'm having trouble adding it to my game and using it well. I'm going to need to figure it out to win at Prince, though.

1. Too little micromanagement.
2. Too much aggression.

My biggest problem now is espionage.

That's also a problem of mine. I mean, is there like a manual that comes with the BTS expansion? Hmm can't remember atm. Like, its a new feature so it can't be explained in the normal Civ4 manual (I think I've lost that one by now anyway :()

Handling espionage, theirs and mine, is a weakness too. It annoys me so.

Okay, im not exactly sure if this is either in Civilopedia or the paperback manual for BTS, but when does the instigate city revolt spy action become available? do you need a certain tech for it, becoz last time I tried playing as Catherine, I had spies and lots of swords ready to tackle the Celts. but my invasion dried up because my spies couldn't lower their defences. This was very early game though, Alphabet so I had just got the spies in the first place.

Okay, im not exactly sure if this is either in Civilopedia or the paperback manual for BTS, but when does the instigate city revolt spy action become available? do you need a certain tech for it, becoz last time I tried playing as Catherine, I had spies and lots of swords ready to tackle the Celts. but my invasion dried up because my spies couldn't lower their defences. This was very early game though, Alphabet so I had just got the spies in the first place.

It takes a decent number of espionage points to incite a city revolt, but it's not just the fact that you need espionage points. You need espionage points explicitly assigned to that civilization. Click on the Spy button in the upper right corner of the screen and assign all of your espionage points to one civ. You'll soon have enough points to mess with them. If you have your points distributed through the entire world instead of concentrated on one civ, you won't have enough to do anything useful for a long time.

Don't forget to drop the assignment of spy points to that civ after you've crippled them. :) I play far too many games with all my spy points going toward a mostly defeated civ or even a vassal just because I forgot to go back to that screen. :rolleyes:

Okay, im not exactly sure if this is either in Civilopedia or the paperback manual for BTS, but when does the instigate city revolt spy action become available? do you need a certain tech for it, becoz last time I tried playing as Catherine, I had spies and lots of swords ready to tackle the Celts. but my invasion dried up because my spies couldn't lower their defences. This was very early game though, Alphabet so I had just got the spies in the first place.

you need a certain number of espionnage points (can't remember, I never use it).
If you don't spend commerce towardss EP, don't have courthouses, castles, ... and no spy specialists, and if you didn't put all your EPs towards your target, it can take a while...

1. National wondwers: Build them to late or some not all.
2. I expand to slowly in the beginning, because inefficient use of hammers and chopping.

It takes a decent number of espionage points to incite a city revolt, but it's not just the fact that you need espionage points. You need espionage points explicitly assigned to that civilization. Click on the Spy button in the upper right corner of the screen and assign all of your espionage points to one civ. You'll soon have enough points to mess with them. If you have your points distributed through the entire world instead of concentrated on one civ, you won't have enough to do anything useful for a long time.

Don't forget to drop the assignment of spy points to that civ after you've crippled them. :) I play far too many games with all my spy points going toward a mostly defeated civ or even a vassal just because I forgot to go back to that screen. :rolleyes:

ok thx. that's what I failed to do. I figured I'd be just ok with a great spy settled in my capital and the spy academy thingy there also, together with maximum possible espionage slider at 30%, but I gotta try that espionage weight against the target civ.
:D

espionage in my eyes seems rather weak when you think about it, only stealing techs and the city revolt thing seem really worth the hassle.

1. WarfareI can't seem to bother microing the most out of my cities, especially during wars. When I'm fighting, I'm always focusing on my armies, so I guess I'm more of a soldiers' king. :D I take care of my stacks and even occasionally set up scout promoted HA's and stuff like that so I can better conserve my units and conquer. Where does this lead to?

I end up having all my reinforcements in the cities, I mean... can you set up waypoints or something, to bring em forward? :eek:

Yeah you can! :goodjob: It's awesome. Hit the city bar (under the city name). When it's flashing, hold shift and right-click on a tile. A yellow circle should appear on the tile. Any unit produced in that city will advance to that tile (and await your orders).

Yeah you can! :goodjob: It's awesome. Hit the city bar (under the city name). When it's flashing, hold shift and right-click on a tile. A yellow circle should appear on the tile. Any unit produced in that city will advance to that tile (and await your orders).
That's a great tip! Thanks! :D

Agreed.

I just moved up from prince to noble, and I'm having an ok time of it. I spent a lot longer on prince than I could have simply because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of micro, the SE, slavery, and cycling your civics for periods of peace and war.

I think for the biggest challenge in moving up in levels is the courage to take a chance at a strategy you've never tried before. If you miss, you miss, but you learn from the effort. Before running an SE, I would have been terrified of seeing a 10% science rate, or risking a strike, or seeing the incredible amount of time it was going to take me to get to CoL, but now, seeing my empire limp to confucianism is a standard part of the early game.

Just a few words. 0% science = 0:science:.
That's the bottom line.

Just a few words. 0% science = 0:science:.
That's the bottom line.
that would be pretty simple.
too bad it's wrong

Just a few words. 0% science = 0:science:.
That's the bottom line.

that would be pretty simple.
too bad it's wrong

Indeed. Although it depends how pedantic he was trying to be. ;) 0% of anything is 0.

However, a 0% science slider simply means none of your commerce is converted into beakers. Of course, there are many ways other than commerce to get beakers, PreLynMax.

Just a few words. 0% science = 0.

I thought this was thorougly discussed already, PreLynMax. science can come from specialists or building/producing research regardless of the researchslider. I can run 100+ beakers/turn in the early AD's with a 0% slider on a foodrich and/or hammerheavy map. Im sure the better players can pull off a lot more. You should give it a try! :)

the weakest part of my game seems to be playing on mp and making opponents quit and cry home to mama a bit too quickly.

You can't play against yourself in MP, you know.

Yes, you can......

I thought this was thorougly discussed already, PreLynMax. science can come from specialists or building/producing research regardless of the researchslider. I can run 100+ beakers/turn in the early AD's with a 0% slider on a foodrich and/or hammerheavy map. Im sure the better players can pull off a lot more. You should give it a try! :)

I already tried that. I ran a 0%:science: game and for the first half of the game (215 turns or so) I received 0%:science: total. I even tried using specialists using research buildings, and it's not enough to keep up in tech (got Masory at 1100A.D., was DOWed on and ran over by superior forces).

I already tried that. I ran a 0%:science: game and for the first half of the game (215 turns or so) I received 0%:science: total.

Have you even bothered teching to Writing for scientists? Otherwise you're not going to get any science from specialists.

SE in three easy steps:
1. Research Writing.
2. Build Libraries.
3. Hire Scientists.

If you follow these, you'll at least get Masonry earlier than 1100 AD. ;)

Yes, you can......

But it's boring.

Besides, the only way someone using Attacko can win is if the other side is also using Attacko. ;)

Have you even bothered teching to Writing for scientists? Otherwise you're not going to get any science from specialists.

SE in three easy steps:
1. Research Writing.
2. Build Libraries.
3. Hire Scientists.

If you follow these, you'll at least get Masonry earlier than 1100 AD. ;)

Yes, but will you be able to tech enough to keep up?

losing interest too soon, i mean i quit the game usually by the time i hit the classical era LOL!! but other than that id have to say not investing research in the trees i need the most(i think the tech reccomender is a huge distraction)

Yes, but will you be able to tech enough to keep up?
I guess you're missing the point.
Noone says you should run 0% science if you could run 100%.
The point is you can expand a lot (that means building a lot of cities) and face a point where you can only run 0% science for a time because the maintenance requires you put all your commerce into gold.
If you do this and build libraries in all your cities and run scientists everywhere you will come out the tech hole at some point because of :
- direct science from the scientists
- bulbing the great scientists you'll inevitably get
- trading with the AIs the good techs you'll have bulbed.


If you try to get with 2 scientists as many science as you would get with 20 cottages, it's not going to work.

Just a few words. 0% science = 0:science:.
That's the bottom line.

Statements like this make it hard to take your arguments seriously. Particularly when you follow them up with contradictory statements 5 posts later.

You can absolutely hold your own and even succeed with a 0% science rate, but you have to lay the groundwork first.

I already tried that. I ran a 0% game and for the first half of the game (215 turns or so) I received 0% total. I even tried using specialists using research buildings, and it's not enough to keep up in tech (got Masory at 1100A.D., was DOWed on and ran over by superior forces).

You actually mean you started a new game, put the slider to 0% on turn 1, and went from there?
Thats...insane....

1. City Placement- I never seem to pick an optimal spot for my cities to go. I study up on other people's games and I have been improving some but I still have a long way to go. And I think I don't quite have a full grasp on how to plan what tiles my city will be working and what improvements to build, which leads me to....

2. City Specialization- I have been getting a little better at it by keeping a notepad and pen next to me during play and making notes about what are my thoughts about how each city should be utilized but still sometimes I veer from my course when I am worried about an attack or falling too far behind in tech and in mid- to late-game I often end up with too many of one type of city and not enough of the others.

3. Expansion- I tend to get too focused on building other things in the early game and I don't pump out enough settlers, so I end up with fewer cities than the AI and stuck in a small area. Either that or I miss out on key resources that I was planning on getting "in a few turns" and by the time I remember to go get them I realize that I'm boxed it.

4. Aggression- I don't war enough. I play diplomacy well and keep myself from being declared on (though at my low difficulty level that probably isn't saying much) but I think that my game would benefit from a bit more early and mid-game fighting. I tend to not attack until very late in the game and I wait until I have some massive overwhelming force.

Which works out for me on Warlord difficulty but from what I have read it will present a few problems when I bump up to Noble and higher. I could probably end my games significantly earlier if i had a solid attack plan and stuck to it. And when I am on higher difficulties I know that getting such a superior force will not always be possible as the game becomes more challenging.

5. Choosing a victory condition- It never seems to pop in my head that I need to work towards a final goal until late in the game and then my options are limited somewhat, and I have wasted time focusing on things that won't help me win.

6. Navy- Ha :lol::lol: All I can say about this one is most of the time during the game I am just thinking, "wonder what the different naval units look like?" I am HORRIBLE about putting together ANY kind of water force. I neglect it terribly. I just focus on my land based strategies and save this for sometime when my game is strong enough that I can start learning how to use a navy properly, or at all really :) Luckily I can avoid a lot of this by picking the right kind of maps :)


Those seem to be my biggest problems right now. I feel sure there are other massive holes in my game, but I have to take it one step at a time ya know? :) I have been reading over the war academy articles and over different strategy posts here and my game has been improving steadily though. I think a lot of my above problems are related so as I work on one the others tend to fall into place a bit. :)

If I had to name anything that has help improved my game the most though (aside from going to "Civ school" here and reading articles :)) it would definitely be the addition of a notepad and pen to my desk. Having a few pages to flip through during games helps me A LOT. I write a few notes pre-game of things I am trying to work on, and I glance over every few turns and have a constant reminder.

And it helps a lot with keeping units, cities, and diplomacy straight. I write down what trades and demands I have made and received and know who are the enemies of my friends and things like that. And my cities tend to be more "specialized" since I have started doing that, instead of all cities just bouncing all over the place with what they are building I actually have ones that have a specific job and stick to it throughout the game.

Just a few words. 0% science = 0:science:.
That's the bottom line.

that would be pretty simple.
too bad it's wrong

Indeed. Although it depends how pedantic he was trying to be. ;) 0% of anything is 0.

However, a 0% science slider simply means none of your commerce is converted into beakers. Of course, there are many ways other than commerce to get beakers, PreLynMax.

I already tried that. I ran a 0%:science: game and for the first half of the game (215 turns or so) I received 0%:science: total. I even tried using specialists using research buildings, and it's not enough to keep up in tech (got Masory at 1100A.D., was DOWed on and ran over by superior forces).

Have you even bothered teching to Writing for scientists? Otherwise you're not going to get any science from specialists.

SE in three easy steps:
1. Research Writing.
2. Build Libraries.
3. Hire Scientists.

If you follow these, you'll at least get Masonry earlier than 1100 AD. ;)



Yes, but will you be able to tech enough to keep up?
here is a picture from a game I have underway

you can see I make over 200 bpt at 0% science.
I didn't even run representation for this one, since I'm going to $rush all the infra I need.http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=211636&stc=1&d=1240339755

I hope this can convince you.
By the way, it's a marathon game, that's why it takes 45 turns for communism.
Of course if I turn up the slider, I'll be making 1400+ bpt and I'll be able to get the kremlin to $ rush better.

You can also see from the score that I don't run 0% science when I'm dead last in score...

I've been doing some experiements, and I couldn't keep up in tech running 0%:science: throughout the whole game. Even running a specialist ecomony lead me far behind very quick. I'll keep my 60% rule.

@Calbert:
What difficulty is that? Wheres the charts stating you ran 0% through the whole game?

i automate my workers after a couple dozen turns because i'm lazy

The weakest parts of my game involve:

Micromanaging whipping - I don't ever try to calculate overflow or manipulate the build queue. Just seems tedious to me.

Micromanaging chopping - I never bother doing a 'prechop,' it just feels like you're abusing the mechanics. No chopping the GL in one turn (at least not without at least 36 fast workers or so).

Diplomacy details - I've never studied the hidden data for AI tendencies - ie who will attack at Pleased, what the unit build probabilities are, who will form PAs etc. I could probably leverage Diplomacy a whole lot better, but I actually prefer to play with random personalities.

I've been doing some experiements, and I couldn't keep up in tech running 0%:science: throughout the whole game. Even running a specialist ecomony lead me far behind very quick. I'll keep my 60% rule.

@Cabert:
What difficulty is that? Wheres the charts stating you ran 0% through the whole game?
Who says you should run 0% all game????
Noone said anything like this. Obviously, if you run 0% science before writing, you'll fall flat.
This is prince/marathon, and I certainly didn't run 0% all game.
I expanded to the dom limit without regard to the science rate, and I didn't say most of my beakers weren't coming from commerce. I didn't run higher than 40% for the biggest part of the game, but it was 40% of a lot which is certainly better than 60% of a little.

I just showed that at 0% commerce I still was above 200 bpt (mostly coming from University of Sankore powered temples), not more not less.

I think it would be nice if people also post how they improve their weakest aspects of game and what results they get.


I noticed a few more of my weakest parts ;) That is:

1. Leaving improvements around the conquered cities as is. E.g. I almost never change anything
2. Lack of cotteges. I just prefer hammers more, don't really know why.
3. Naval invasions. I always lack a strong navy, and when I mount invasion into the different continent, I never have enough army. I just have no patience to wait till I get a strong army.

Realized that, I've tried to fix these mistakes in my most recent game on Large Tectonics 70% water with random leader (turned out to be Kublai Khan of Mongols). After Keshik rush I reimproved my new land and I spammed cotteges everywhere they reasonably fit. And I launched invasion to different continent only when I had "oh my god" ammount of cavs/cannons/riffles (by my standards anyway).

Cottege spam helped with eco after early rushes and turned into decent research at the late game. I destroyed every nation apart from Bismarck and his vassal Pacal. Then I launched Space Ship and god help to Alpha Centauri natives after mongols arrive :) It was my easiest Monarch victory to this date.

And Khublai/Mongols aren't even my fav Nation nor one which I play very well. All I did is improved those three aspects and Monarch game suddenly became almost no chalange (this one at least).

Wheres the charts stating you ran 0% through the whole game?

thats just stupid dude.

[QUOTE=CornPlanter;8016514]I think it would be nice if people also post how they improve their weakest aspects of game and what results they get.


I noticed a few more of my weakest parts ;) That is:

1. Leaving improvements around the conquered cities as is. E.g. I almost never change anything
2. Lack of cotteges. I just prefer hammers more, don't really know why.
3. Naval invasions. I always lack a strong navy, and when I mount invasion into the different continent, I never have enough army. I just have no patience to wait till I get a strong army.

QUOTE]

It would be easier to follow walkthroughs and improvements if I could load Civ on my computer at work, :D

1. I'm guilty of it, especially if the city is on another continent and I didn't grab any workers with the conquest (although I recently picked up a barb city that had four nice cottage tiles well on their way to towns. :confused:)

2. I'm partial to cottages, but I have a fairly rigid preference for improvements that I know I need to relax: cottages on flood plains, farms on plains (especially when it's nothing but plains), and farms only on pre-civil service grasslands (i.e. riverside) and cottages on the other.

I'm tempted to go with some cottages on some grassland hills, though... given the compelling arguments I've heard in favor of that tactic. ;)

3. Naval is a weakness of mine too, but not much of a weakness since the AI is SO much worse than I am. And on maps where it matters, if I can milk a pirate navy I'll go Capt. Jack Sparrow on the AI for as long as possible. Great for picking up those GG points, and fun as hell to attach a warlord to a 27 xp privateer.

4. Tech trading. I just have a lot of trouble accepting the discounts, and I have a lot of trouble figuring out how to maximize the trades I receive from a single tech. Since the AI discount your valuable monopoly tech as soon as you trade it once, getting anything close to approximate value on the second and third trades is tough. I mean, once I get civil service for machinery (for example), I can't bring myself to take HBR and Drama.

I also still have not let go of the haggling mindset I had in Civ III (where I could save a few gold through careful bargaining.)

Working cottages during the BC era. I never get that massive boast in research from 1000BC to 1AD. That's why I'm stuck in immortal difficulty forever. Deity is like the unreachable last step.

My weakest parts are:

1. Finishing games when I know its over.

2. Using different strategies then cottage/library/GS/Bulb/Great Library/Lib/Riflemen/Steel/Infantry/Win.

I think my current weakness is inability to adapt to land that doesn't support a cottage (or trade route) economy. I can win handy domination victories at Emperor with lots of floodplains and riverside grassland, and am hanging around to the mid to late 1900's for space victories at Prince with less helpful land. I just can't seem to get the hang of running the different civics that take advantage of specialists and non-cottage improvements. Are there any guides on running state property here?

The opening isn't too bad
I can balance expansion, an early axe rush if needed, and the economy
I can set up and run a SE, CE, or trade route economy
I've cured my wonderlust and prioritize getting the useful ones for my strategy and ignore the rest
I'm still lousy at using slavery and micromanaging (which becomes more of a problem as the game goes on but much better players than me have mentioned trouble with micromanagement)

Later on I lose focus and energy amidst the mass of detail
If I win its usually cultural or space race, ocasionally diplomatic, and only ever domination/conquest on pangaea maps

My current weakness is not getting my start fast enough to get the game under control by 500 AD for immortal difficulty. I guess more planning time is needed.

Well, I've only played one game (which I didn't finish lol) thus far, and it revealed my biggest weakness... playing. I just click on whatever looks cool and, somehow, it did fine for me in that game (I had two nukes by the time all the other civs finally had musketmen lol), but that really takes away from the experience, according to what I've read. I'll play a few games where I actually implement strategy, and then let you know from there :lol:

I do actually HATE that micromanaging that so many others seem to dislike as well lol. I automate so much and don't bother micro managing cities, so there's points where i go through turn after turn just pressing ENTER lol.

winning the game

Keeping all of the possibilities for play style in mind. When I start a game, I tend to think either Peaceful Builder, or Warmonger, or maybe Religious or Cultural. If things turn differently and the situation supports a different way of playing, I have a hard time shifting gears. If bunches of civs start getting aggressive when I've been playing a builder game, it takes me longer than it should to turn around my game and start focussing on the defensive war.

I tend to forget to build a navy, unless I am trying to circumnavigate.

Playing! I'm new here .. lol

1. Religious diplomacy- I just love organized religion so much...so screw all those heathen AIs and their massive obsolete armies...

2. Overproductivity- The notion of the build bars slowly creeping along is just...unacceptable, so I have yet to create a GP farm:(

3. Overaggression- I often notice that I start war buildups/attacks for no particular reason when anyone dares to close in on my teching...which makes it very hard to ever finish a peaceful game.

For my part, the following are my problems:

-Mid-game (late classical to mid-Rennaissance) wars: For some reason, I have a pretty harsh time with them. It's either that I don't amass sufficiently large SoDs, that my enemies had theirs from a long ago; or a combination of both. Other war times are fairly easy for me, especially due to strong military focus in the early game or because of a tremendous tech advantage in the late game.

-Mid-game expansion: I do expand sufficiently ont the early eras, but on maps in which I have to share a landmass, I only focus on the initial expansion, develop my economy (perhaps it's overdeveloped, but that's good overall) & find out that when I'm about to settle a more distant land, the AI players are about 2-7 turns ahead of me.

Asides from these problems, another one would be leveling up from Noble to Prince, mainly due to my tech & score advantages above all approach (useful for cultural or space race victories). For all of you to know, I play at Noble, epic speed, huge maps, no barbs, no random events, total kills required.