Hi, I have lots of questions, and I apologize if they get asked all the time. I've been reading here for a while today and didn't quite get the answers I need, so here goes.

I play BTS 3.19 on cheiftan. I tend to 'automate' a lot, because for now I am a shallow player. I usually focus on city improvements and combat. How can I keep my cities from getting too big and becoming either unhealthy, unhappy, shrinking, or taking way too long to produce?

I was playing hotseat with my cousin yesterday and our cities were either unhappy many times, some times unhealthy, and his were shrinking and not producing anything almost.

I can remember when I joined this forum asking a similar question and hearing from someone that you have to almost do mathematics with all your city tiles to manage them perfectly. I really dislike math, so I hope that is not the case.

Next I want to ask about workers, civics, research order and similar stuff. But I need to learn about proper city management first. Thanks very much.

Best thing to as a starting point is go into the 'civilopedia' in the game and look for the section that explains the game mechanics. Then check out the plethora of articles in the 'war academy' section on this lovely forum, loads of articles explaining every conceivable concept. Proper micromanagement of city tiles is only really necessary on the higher levels i.e. emperor+

Riddle, just a little micromanagement can help your game.

Decide to review your cities once every certain amount of turns, then adjust what you population is doing (a population of 10 means you can either work 10 tiles, run 10 specialists, or a combination). Each population requires 2 food, extra food with leead to population growth.

If your city has unhappiness, it's too big or you need more happiness or lower population.

You do not need to know math but the game is fairly complicated and more than a wargame.

Press Ctrl+R to turn on resource bubbles.
Build 1.5 workers per city.

Care to post a save of one of your games?
Do not automate anything, the ai that controls your empire isn't smart and its much better if you control your workers manually. You don't really need to do exact math for everything, just play around with your city tiles see which choices are the most optimal for your situation.
Check the introductory courses in the war academy, it will help a lot.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/introductory_courses

Sure, I can find a save somewhere probably. I can sometimes fix the unhappiness or unhealthiness with a building or some improvement, but when I can't seem to fix it with those things it presents a problem to my limited skill. I might need to do more with specialists also, I never really mess with that feature.

Read:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138904

and

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=327926

Hey, I'm pretty new like you. I won one deity game with an extremely lucky quecha rush. Anyways, like the other people said, YOU should control the game, not the computer, therefore refrian form automation. cehftain seems pretty good for a beginner, so it isn't all bad. Try Hatshepsut- it's a good beginner leader for both war and peace expansion.

Hey, I'm pretty new like you. I won one deity game with an extremely lucky quecha rush.

:eek:

Ah, I'm using the Quot Capita mod. If I post a save game, nobody would be able to use it unless they have the mod too, is that right?

I'm not much more advanced then you, but I'll offer a couple of tips FWIW:

Hereditary Rule and Slavery do wonders for early game unhappines and unhealthiness probelms.

When you build something in a city, do not click your next build in the pop-up. Click examine city EVERYTIME. Before leaving the city screen, look at what your citizens are doing...play around with it...what else could they do?

Don't automate workers. It takes just a bit more time, but have them build what you want and where. You can automate them later to build railroads.

You don't need to build every building in every city. You can get away with it on chieftan. But before clicking build, ask yourself, what will this building do for this city?

Thanks Sosasoser, I appreciate the tips. Can anyone recommend an easy-ish nation to play and what to research at first? I take it slavery and hereditary rule are helpful, but how do I take advantage of slavery? I keep hearing about "whipping" but I have never seen that command. Thanks again.

The button to whip is on the city screen in the lower right. It's a big orange arrow pointing up when it's available. Also if you have alerts on with the mod you are running, you should see in the alert section when you can do it.

Financial leaders are great to play around with and learn. The extra cash gives you money to burn and get a nice tech lead with. Try Huayna if you want to wonderspam or Ragnar if you want to fight a lot of wars.

Thank you, I'll give Ragnar a try.

Some things I thought about to advance a lvl or 2 was:

1. Dont build too many wonders. Some are good but a few are just not worth wasting time on.
2. Build a worker first. This usually gives you a faster start then anything else.
3. Cottages are good. If your not in need of food in a city your grasslands and floodplains should have cottages on them.
4. Get bronze working fairly early to chop forests in your cities while building settlers/wonders/important buildings to get them done faster.

Ok, I just played about an hour or so with Ragnar. Not feeling too good about it, but I've never used him before.

I got to Renaissance age pretty fast. I could research pretty quickly too. I didn't have much money (70 or 80 gold tops), and I also never invaded anyone. I built 5 cities (not consecutively) and focused on repelling barbarians and getting economy going. Never declared war or got declared on. I only used whipping once, but I don't know how much to use it or when to use it. I ended up with Civil Service which adds +1 unhappiness to every city, is that a bad move? Also, one of my cities got to size 8 with growth de-emphasized. And lastly, my capital got unhealthy really fast due to jungle. Does anyone want to see the save? I think I covered pretty much everything.

I ended up with Civil Service which adds +1 unhappiness to every city

Uh, what?

Also, one of my cities got to size 8 with growth de-emphasized. And lastly, my capital got unhealthy really fast due to jungle.

Why are you de-emphasizing growth? Growing into unhappiness is bad but this means you need to get more happiness; luxuries, religion, military police, etc.

Does anyone want to see the save?

Yes.

Don't really know how to explain it. I was asked if I wanted to adopt Civil Service, and one of the effects was +1 "red frowny face" for every city.

I de-emphasized growth because it got too big and I wanted to avoid unhappiness and unhealthiness. Is there a better way? I had gems, confucianism, and maybe 1 more thing but that was it.

Where should I host the save file for you? Thanks.

Don't really know how to explain it. I was asked if I wanted to adopt Civil Service, and one of the effects was +1 "red frowny face" for every city.

I de-emphasized growth because it got too big and I wanted to avoid unhappiness and unhealthiness. Is there a better way? I had gems, confucianism, and maybe 1 more thing but that was it.

Where should I host the save file for you? Thanks.

Are you using a mod that affects gameplay? Civil Service is a tech, not a civic. It allows the Bureaucracy civic which certainly does not add +1 :mad:

With growth, the "better way" is to up your happy cap. Try Hereditary rule.

You can just post the save file in your forum post using the "manage attachments" function.

Don't really know how to explain it. I was asked if I wanted to adopt Civil Service, and one of the effects was +1 "red frowny face" for every city.

That's not supposed to happen.

I am playing with Quot Capita enabled. That might be what's doing it.

I am playing with Quot Capita enabled. That might be what's doing it.

No idea what that is but it must change gameplay, in which case, specific suggestions from this board will not be very helpful.

Think he means the anarchy from swapping civics.
That only lasts 1 turn if you do.

No idea what that is but it must change gameplay, in which case, specific suggestions from this board will not be very helpful.

IIRC Quot Capita makes several changes to gameplay and has a lot of addons. Its a good mod pack, but it might be a good idea to get the basic game down before moving on to it.

Yeah, you're right. Think I'll do that.

install the BUG mod. It will tell you when your cities are about to become unhealthy/unhappy so that you can take corrective action before it happens. I would make a habit opening the city advisor at least once every 5 turns just to see what is going on in your cities.

I would suggest you play with a expansive / charismatic leader this will make it easier for you as you will get a +3 health and +1 hapiness bonus - I think i remember Cyrus having these traits in vanilla & warlords.

But you still need to learn to keep your cities within the health & hapiness caps (you need to keep checking the city management menu regularly for this.), also build temples for early hapiness(you need to have a religion to build a temple), for health Granary / Aqueduct.

Do you know what resources can give you health & hapiness? All the food resources + seafood will give you health. get these hooked up (improve them and build a road to the nearest city)
Hapiness comes from - Gold / Silver (you can mine these) + Fur / Ivory (With camp) + Dyes / Incense / Sugar --- you can only improve these after researching calendar so they wont be available in the early game.

Also you can avoid unhealthiness from jungles by chopping them.

Thank you very much. When I play with Ragnar, as he has the financial trait, how should I be making my money? For that matter, how do you make money with any leader? I was playing hotseat with my cousin yesterday and by the medieval age we were both almost always flat broke every turn. Thanks.

Thank you very much. When I play with Ragnar, as he has the financial trait, how should I be making my money? For that matter, how do you make money with any leader? I was playing hotseat with my cousin yesterday and by the medieval age we were both almost always flat broke every turn. Thanks.

Cottages.

Improve the tiles in your city's "big fat cross" (i.e., what you see when you double-click your city).

Food is priority #1. You want to settle your cities near food resources (seafood, grains, livestock, calendar resources [bananas, sugar, etc.]). Improve these tiles first so that your city grows. Aside from food resources, you may need to build farms and windmills to increase the food so that your city will grow to size 15++

Some production is priority #2. Every city needs at least 1 hill to mine so that you can produce buildings, units, etc. (Advanced players can get away without hills, etc.)

Commerce is priority #3. Commerce is what drives your tech rate and pays the bills. If you see gold, gems, silver, etc. then you should try and target these sites (be sure to combine with food resources!). Aside from commerce resources, you get your commerce primarily by building cottages. You should try and build LOTS of cottages across your empire so that you tech fast.

Health and Happiness!!! You need to increase your health and happiness caps as much as possible as soon as possible. In the early going, for health, this means acquiring health resources (seafood, grains, livestock, etc.) and building the early health buildings (granary, aqueduct, harbor). For happiness, this means acquiring happiness resources (precious metals, ivory, fur, etc.), building the early happiness buildings (forge, market, theatre, temples, etc.), and teching to monarchy for the Hereditary Rule civic (+1 :) per unit stationed in city).

Also, mods are fun, but getting the game basics down first is probably a good idea.

Okay, just played a few hours as Washington. Had a few rough spells of having research as low as 20% (not enough money again) and I probably had my workers too automated again also because I wasn't really building any cottages like I should have.

I am in the industrial age, and every other civ has choked me out, territory-wise. I waited until one other one asked me to go to war with Hammurabi and I said yes. So far, have taken one Babylonian city at somewhat high troop cost. Other civs seem to have airships, which puzzles me because they still have longbowmen.

I didn't really whip much this time, either. Still trying to get the hang of that. And Futurehermit, when you say get cities to size 15++, what do I do when people say it's too crowded? I can definitely see that I need to play a little bit like the AI does and spread out like a plague.

And Futurehermit, when you say get cities to size 15++, what do I do when people say it's too crowded?

Happiness is one of the forces that you need to learn to manage - there's a strategy article that will expose you to the tools available.

Okay, just played a few hours as Washington. Had a few rough spells of having research as low as 20% (not enough money again) and I probably had my workers too automated again also because I wasn't really building any cottages like I should have.

I am in the industrial age, and every other civ has choked me out, territory-wise. I waited until one other one asked me to go to war with Hammurabi and I said yes. So far, have taken one Babylonian city at somewhat high troop cost. Other civs seem to have airships, which puzzles me because they still have longbowmen.

I didn't really whip much this time, either. Still trying to get the hang of that. And Futurehermit, when you say get cities to size 15++, what do I do when people say it's too crowded? I can definitely see that I need to play a little bit like the AI does and spread out like a plague.
Even having played CIV 4 earlier, I only just got BTS recently and a lot of the new concepts were foreign to me. I am still getting the hang of it, as it is different every time, but the whole point of the game is about managing your civ and balancing out every factor you have to deal with. I think what helped me develop into a better BTS player was just starting test games to better get the hang of the new game concepts, like I played for a bit doing mostly espionage, or I played for a bit playing extremely aggressively, running specialists, or rexing to failure and trying to recover (the best way to learn the concept of cottaging.) It's still fun trying to figure it out and I think makes you a better player in the long run. Also, when you can mop the floor at a certain difficulty, play it again until you can beat it with any random civ and then move up in difficulty. Especially on the higher difficulty's when it looks like you are coasting to a victory, there is always some dick that ruins your plans by declaring war, and you better always be ready for it :)

EDIT: Whoops, didn't notice second page.

What happens with a city when it gets too crowded and you can't do anything to fix it anytime soon? Does production slow down or something? Also, should I add specialists to a city that are of a field where the city already does well or where it is deficient? And last, what is "rexing"? Thanks.

It just gets angry (:mad:) or unhealthy (:yuck:). You work the same tiles, but you have one useless citizen. Specialize your cities- so put your Merchants in your Money city, and scientists in Science city. Rexing is Rapid EXpansion, or really fast settling.

I play the game on Chieftain as Washington and never get below 60% reserch. I never automate workers till late game when telling them what to do is to time consuming and tedious.Build mines on hills,cottages on floodplains and grasslands and farm all plains. I never farm floodplains. The reason be if you cottage them the gold brought in is nice to have. I always try for Stonehenge just for the reason of cultural border expansion. If any of this is bad advice feel free to tell me. The one problem I have is not building enough units for defense let alone offense. Having a religion and religious buildings also helps as they will produce gold for your cities. If you spread your religon to other civs and they adopt it its all the more better.

What happens with a city when it gets too crowded and you can't do anything to fix it anytime soon? Does production slow down or something? Also, should I add specialists to a city that are of a field where the city already does well or where it is deficient? And last, what is "rexing"? Thanks.

Generally speaking, yes you want to maximize your city's capacity in what it is good at so you will want to run specialists that help that. However, there may be times when you will want to switch it up. Is your whole empire a little cash strapped and you're looking for money for upgrades but can't reduce the science slider too much at the moment: might run some merchants for awhile. Need to get an important building out like a Bank or Wall Street in your hammer-poor commerce city? Running engineers and priests during the build might be a good idea.

You just have to remember to switch the specialists back when the time comes.

Okay, that makes sense. I could have sworn though that I've hired merchants in a city before and not had it improve my money situation. I'll double-check though. Another thing is, in the first 100 turns, even as a financial leader, I wind up losing nearly all my money and have to crank research down. Is what you describe in your last post what I need to do to remedy that, Sosasoser?

And what happens to cities that have more than 1 religion in them? Thanks.

Another thing is, in the first 100 turns, even as a financial leader, I wind up losing nearly all my money and have to crank research down.

It's NORMAL to have more expenses than you can handle with the treasury alone.

The game UI makes it very easy to confuse research conversion rate ( percentage of :commerce: converted to :science: ) with research rate ( :science: / turn ). The second one is what matters.

Okay, that makes sense. I could have sworn though that I've hired merchants in a city before and not had it improve my money situation. I'll double-check though. Another thing is, in the first 100 turns, even as a financial leader, I wind up losing nearly all my money and have to crank research down. Is what you describe in your last post what I need to do to remedy that, Sosasoser?

And what happens to cities that have more than 1 religion in them? Thanks.

Hiring merchants will not always increase your money situation, especially if you don't work a high commerce tile so you can hire the merchant.

It's very normal to be losing money early in the game. There is nothing wrong with it and it won't hurt you long term. That early, libraries plus science specialists will probably give you more beakers than a few notches on the slider. As you initially expand your empire, most new cities will actually be losing you money at first. You have to develop them to earn money. A few things to look at:

1) Are you expanding too much, too fast?
2) Are you working high commerce tiles?
3) Can you build a market or courthouse in the city to increase your cash Or a bit later grocers or banks?
4) Any way to increase your trade routes?

Usually in my early expansion (Noble level) my science slider will probably wind up dipping down to about 40%. However, it doesn't matter as long as I am out-researching the AI. The slider will likely not ever get back up to 100% in my games unless I found and spread a lucrative corporation. The slider itself doesn't matter. All that matters is the number of beakers you are generating per turn compared to the competition. Founding a religion, spreading it and building the shrine is another way that I might get my slider back up to 100%, but that is very rare for me to even bother with anymore; I'd rather let the competition spend the hammers on missionaries while spending mine on troops that will let me take over their shrine cities and reap the rewards of their hard work. However, if you can get an early religion, it's a viable strategy.

If a city has more than one religion, my understanding is that there can be some unhappiness depending on your civic. You shouldn't really notice any problems at your level. I haven't paid too much attention to it as generally I know that at some point I'll be switching to Free Religion. Also, the more religions in a city the more temples you can build and increase your happy cap and the more monasteries you can build and increase your beakers until you tech scientific method.

I don't think there are any civics which give :mad: s for more religions. FR gives more :)s though.

I don't think there are any civics which give :mad: s for more religions. FR gives more :)s though.

Yeah, I think your right. I play Rise of Mankind with Revolutions enabled quite a bit. Sometimes I get confused with what's in vanilla and what's in the mod if I'm not focusing on it. Should probably stop doing that...

Okay, I played 2 LONG games today. Each time I did exceptionally well, for me. Money, military, tech, I had it all. In the first game I made the mistake of signing a defense pact with Churchill, so when Shaka declared on Churchill, I got dragged into it. Unfortunately, I was closer to Shaka than Churchill. Zulu troops came STREAMING over my borders. I couldn't stop them all. They were way behind me in tech, culverins versus machine guns. I still couldn't hold them back.

In the second game, Julius Caesar declared on me really early. I am guessing it was because I was hoarding all the iron. Anyway, he used mutual allies territory to sneak past my troops and 'fronts' with war elephants and really good infantry. Long story short, it was pretty much a havoc-filled repeat of the last game.

Cliffs: I am getting better at the game, but I am getting stomped in war by tricky, yet out-teched enemies. Any more tips for combat and keeping enemies out?

Check F9 Demographics often.
Stay near the top in soldiers.

Have one city (it should be a production heavy city) dedicated to building military units. You should build a mix of units and keep increasing your military strength and keep checking demographics to make sure you are near the top of the power ratings.
Make sure you put a barrack into the city + also that you build the heroic epic in this city at some point.

The triumverate. Darius. Napoleon. Caesar.

Cities tend to auto manage if terraformed properly. Thing 1 you need for a city is food (1-2 resources). Thing 2 you need is other neat stuff to use - gold, special resources, whatever. Thing 3 you need is cottage spam. Thing 4 is mines.

Build in cities: granary, or monument to spread culture pre religion. Library. Barracks if you need troops soon, and you know a push is coming (you'll love them later with religion.) The great wall (yes, it's a building, giggle.) Courthouses - organized.... forges,culture spammers, ect. Harbours. and so on..

I just played an interesting but depressing game. I found that like usual, I was way ahead of everyone else in tech until industrial or modern. Then I found myself at the bottom of the score list. While Louis ended up winning a time victory, I had the most advanced army in the game, far ahead of my neighbors. But I was boxed in, and couldn't expand at all. I had a total of 5 cities for the whole game. Ragnar, who was the biggest pain in the butt the whole time, had far more troops than me. I have no idea how he did it, but even with my vastly superior technology he could thwart me. Anyway, I didn't feel very satisfied by this play through. Any observations on this? Thanks.

I just played an interesting but depressing game. I found that like usual, I was way ahead of everyone else in tech until industrial or modern. Then I found myself at the bottom of the score list. While Louis ended up winning a time victory, I had the most advanced army in the game, far ahead of my neighbors. But I was boxed in, and couldn't expand at all. I had a total of 5 cities for the whole game. Ragnar, who was the biggest pain in the butt the whole time, had far more troops than me. I have no idea how he did it, but even with my vastly superior technology he could thwart me. Anyway, I didn't feel very satisfied by this play through. Any observations on this? Thanks.

Hard to say without seeing the game's progression, but 5 cities is WAY too few. 6 is a bare minimum to even consider winning via culture or perhaps space, but it sounds like you need to focus on improving early expansion. Even on immortal, if I have less than 6 cities by 1 AD, I feel like I've failed. With twice as many cities, you'll ultimately tech more, and produce more, and be able to keep up with the AI better. In a lot of games, in the late game, I've got 20+ cities, unless I'm focusing on a cultural or perhaps diplomatic win.

What win condition were you shooting for? You'll need to think about that along the way, because with that small an empire, diplomatic victory is likely the only potential win condition, and in my opinion, something I wouldn't recommend trying for until you've learned some of the core strategies and moved up a few levels.

You might consider posting a game, and your thoughts along the way - you'll get constructive feedback along the way, and perhaps a shadow or two to help you learn and get better.

Yeah, I should eventually post a game. I wasn't going for any particular win scenario. I wanted to expand more but china and england boxed me in tight.

Yeah, I should eventually post a game. I wasn't going for any particular win scenario. I wanted to expand more but china and england boxed me in tight.

You said you were way ahead in tech, but Ragnar had troop numbers to counter you.
Sounds like you needed to build more troops to take advantage of your technology lead.

Usually that's a symptom of trying to build every building in every city, and neglecting to train units. Make sure you build enough to defend your cities, and then put a good amount in a huge stack and take the hurt to your enemy :lol:

Well, I felt like I had a sufficient army until I went up against Ragnar. I had the modern weapons but they seemed to not stop him one bit.

Also, I just played a game as china with only conquest and domination as the victory conditions. This time, I managed to spread out some more and had 7 or 8 cities. I had a similar army to my previous game, only this time I only got to Renaissance. Every other civ around me was begging me for tech, or offering me insulting trades for tech. I kept refusing. Around the time I reached renaissance, I started catching spies in a couple of cities. Then I started catching them every other turn, then every turn. It seemed people like Sitting Bull, Mansa Musa and my other neighbors were practically funneling spies into my cities.

Eventually they proved too many to hold off, and I started getting poisoned, getting things blown up such as improvements, buildings etc. My pride in my accomplishments crumbled and I quit, even with two cities having great spies living in them and one city having scotland yard.

So my next question is, while I may have improved in expansion (as Mao), what can I do to stop spies more effectively? I was denying everyone's requests, does that make them come after you with spies? Thanks again.

Build 1 spy in every city you care about-it's what I do.

Couple more questions:

1)What makes the AI on Chieftan such shameless technology beggars? They've got me surrounded on all sides and they want my researched tech.

2)What makes them offer such insulting trades, when they offer anything at all?

3)I just played again and got horribly boxed in again. I almost always seem to start on a peninsula with all my neighbors being able to seal me in. Ridiculous. Is there a really good map generator to use?

4)Last question, is there a good guide/standard to quick expansion? This getting isolated business is bad, I need to get bigger more quickly without over extending myself or getting un-guarded cities captured barbarians. Any tips? Thanks.

Hypothetically speaking here Riddleofsteel you start a game and research a few things. We'll assume you are landlocked and ocean resources are not in play.

What does the list of the first 5 or so things your capital produces look like?

Basically I'm guessing you are not producing settlers and workers quickly enough as the AI at such a low level should not box you out. You should box them out.

Typically I start my first city and then build a worker or something like a monument or granary. When I get a chance to make a settler that I can escort so it doesn't get killed, I found a new city. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum or until I am sealed in. Are you saying I should just keep making settlers from small, un-groomed cities and send them out all over the place as fast as I can? Or is there another way? Thanks.

i used to have this problem, even now i am not too good at early expansion, somehow cant seem to do it as fast as some of the better players.
How i get around it is, if i find anyone too close to home, then they die, the moment i find a close neighbour i start preparing for an early war.
At chieftain you should not have too many difficulties with an early war, you need to quickly research AH and build lots of chariots or research BW and build a stack of axemen.
if you want it really easy you can play as egypt or persia who have a chariot as a UU.

Generally your best bet at an early land grab, which is entirely fundable at chieftan almost indefinitely, would be something along the lines of:

Assuming landlocked-
1. Worker while teching whatever is needed to work the nearby resources.
2. Warriors or other Escorts until your capital hits the happy cap.
3. Pump out settlers.

The capital should be your worker/settler pump while your outside cities get started on monuments and workers as well. On chieftan 1 warrior or archer per city is enough to quell any barb problems the majority of the time.

DO NOT build a monument in your capital "just cause". Until you start to whip a granary is also largely pointless in the very early game. You will not be growing past population levels of 5-7 depending on resources/leader, which given the amount of food in a standard capital will not take very long.

Just keep pumping out workers and settlers. After you research any needed (if you don't have marble/stone skip masonry - no grains will skip agriculture for now) techs to work resources move onto Bronzeworking, Pottery, and Writing. Bronzeworking to whip in buildings and Pottery/Writing to recover the economy and keep on putting out cities. Don't even bother with wonders at this point. Until you can expand properly at the lower levels wonders will only slow you down. Workers, Settlers, and escorts for them are all you need. As far as buildings in the cities you can get by with a monument (chopped/whipped asap), a granary, and a library. These 3 buldings will last you until universities a lot of the time.

As far as protection from the AI if you actually put 1-2 defenders in every city expanding in such a fasion you will likely have 1.5-2 times the military size of the early game AI which will greatly deter (but not stop) a DoW against you. A small force of 3-4 archers roaming your borders will stop any pre-construction aggressive act.

There is more than one way to handle early expansion. If you want to do it with the sword, do a search for sisustil's early rush guide and follow his advice.

If an early war is not favorable, then you need to maximize your settler output as fast as you can. Try this, assuming that you don't have any seafood resources to work in the capital's BFC, build a worker first while researching the techs that worker will need to improve resources in your BFC. Now, build warriors and get as much food production as you can in the capital. When your capital hits pop 4, start building in trios...warrior*/worker/settler. The warrior defends the settler and the new city, the worker connects it to the capital and then improves it. the settler does its thing. Keep doing that until the available land is gone or you go broke. Do that and you should be able to easily out expand the AI on lower levels unless you just really have a horrible starting position. Letting the capital grow a bit before pumping out settlers is faster than trying to pump them out in a 1 or 2 population city.

BTW, when the build is warrior, switch production to hammers if you aren't running slavery so you don't grow to fast. If you are running slavery, use the whip to speed up your production and get rid of excess population.


*If you get archery during this expansion, build archers not warriors.

Cities with more than one religion:

If you have not adopted a State Religion: The city gets +1 culture/turn per religion present, and the ability to build religious buildings for each religion present.

If you have a State Religion and you are using a religious civic other than Free Religion: if one of the religions present is the State Religion, then the city gets +1 happiness, +1 culture/turn, and your religious-civic benefit. In any case it gets the ability to build religious buildings for each religion present.

If you are using Free Religion: the city gets +1 culture/turn and +1 happiness per religion present, and the ability to build religious buildings for each religion present.

While not strictly a benefit of the religions themselves, you can build missionaries for each religion present if you have a monastery there for the given religion or you are using Organized Religion.

Good reading material. I started another game as Shaka and once again found myself on a peninsula. I got 5 cities out then decided to ride rough shod over my nearest neighbors with my hordes. Khmer and Germany went down before Renaissance. That made me pretty proud of myself. I am currently biding my time in Industrial, and I think I am going to try another rampage. I may have waited too long though. Peter of Russia is almost neck to neck with me.

The AI is sometimes quite dumb, building useless forts on important resources. I never automate my workers. I don't suggest you do.
For my style, I try to balance food and production with the occasional hamlet thrown in.

Good reading material. I started another game as Shaka and once again found myself on a peninsula. I got 5 cities out then decided to ride rough shod over my nearest neighbors with my hordes. Khmer and Germany went down before Renaissance. That made me pretty proud of myself. I am currently biding my time in Industrial, and I think I am going to try another rampage. I may have waited too long though. Peter of Russia is almost neck to neck with me.

There's your biggest mistake. Do not bide your time between wars. When you have an army...press the attack to one civ after another. The only reasons to stop fighting in that type of game are because you need to recover economically or you need to briefly pause to build more units and/or upgrade your highly promoted vets. Don't ever bide your time; all that does is give the AI a chance to catch-up.

I have no idea how switching to CS could give an extra frowny face - unless you were in nationhood before? that gives 2 happy faces from the barracks, so it's possible to lose happiness from going to Civil Service.

but you can't get to nationalism without researching civil service first, so I dunno...

Sosasoser, you are absolutely 100% right. I need to beat on people sooner. I am playing as Churchill and I combined advice from several people. I optimized my starting turns and got out 9 cities all near each other and placed near good resources. I have lead with the high score for the entire game (current as of modern age) and have the most powerful and advanced army in the game.

Then there are two problems. The first is that I turtled like a madman again, not even leaving my own borders. Not to attack, not to scout, nothing. I just sat in my cities and built an army worthy of Mordor. The second problem is that I attracted the attention of every foreign spy in the vicinity once again. Even with one or sometimes two spies in every city as well as intelligence agencies, courthouses and jails I was losing buildings, improvements and getting poisoned badly by enemy saboteurs.

This is the biggest deterrent for me, mainly not being able to see or fight the enemy in this regard. Is there anything else whatsoever I can do to stop sabotage? But anyway, I managed to shrug off most of the poisonings ( I can hear Churchill saying "We will defend our island, whatever the cost may be...") and managed to make enough gold to keep most of my fighting forces cutting edge. But the biggest thing I need to work on now is knowing who to buddy up to and who to hold at a distance.

Right now I usually just allow pleased or friendly nations into my borders, is that all right? I need ideas on how to improve my diplomacy. I almost always snort in disgust at the ridiculous trade offers I am presented with and just deny whatever they want. I am not sure if that makes them sabotage you, but I am sure it doesn't make them happy.

Whew, sorry for the huge post. I guess I am just feeling good with my improving skills, and excited to learn even more. If I can get some help with diplomacy and alliances that would be great. I guess I dislike being a warmonger because I like to stretch out games and take my time so I don't plow through it too quick. But I need to strike the right balance, because I am sitting on huge armies that are almost never used except in defense. Thanks again.

About espionage:

There's not a way to stop it, per se. There are things you can do to reduce it.

1) 1 spy per city will make it more likely to catch opposing spies. More than 1 spy won't help, nor will a spy help after you have a security bureau
2) Build courthouses and castles early, jails, intelligence agencies and security bureaus later to build more espionage points and make enemy missions more expensive
3) Run counter-espionage missions, which make espionage missions against you more expensive.

making missions more expensive won't stop them, but they will slow them down.

As for diplomacy - it's much more effective to figure this out early. You really want to make some civs your friends and not worry about the others. When your friends ask for tech or make a trade offer, give it to them, no matter how bad it is. You'll get a bonus for it. be their religion, have open borders with them.

Figure out who they hate and when they ask you to stop trading with that civ... stop trading with that civ - you get a bonus for it.

At the lower levels you will be technologically superior to the AI's if you play marginally well. This results in you being a great target for espionage. At least that has been my findings. I am much more likely to be targeted when I am "in the lead". The best way to prevent this is to simply kill the AI and/or focus more on espionage buildings.

AutomatedTeller and Lansky, I had all the requisite buildings for counter-espionage aid, like jails castles etc. and they were pelting me every couple of turns. Only after a huge multi-nation war did the sabotage cool off. They must have been spending huge amounts of points on me. I'll have to do more counter missions. To do that, do I just have the spy run a mission in my city at any given time? Or do I have to wait for a particular moment or cue?

I also have had a hard time making allies in a couple of recent games, because strangely enough the first nations I encountered as "neighbors" were really far away and I couldn't exactly see where they were, I could only see a scout. That made it hard to learn about them.

Spies are a problem. You are just going to have to learn that certain AI's are going to throw a ton of spies at you. I find Pericles and Sitting Bull to be particularly bad. If they are a neighbor, they are dieing as quickly as I can get to them just so I don't have to put up with their spies. The other option is to play the spy game against the AI. Build more spies and run espionage better against them. In a recent game, I got real sick of HC's late game spying. Apparently, the Incan was of the opinion that water is meant for poisoning. My response? Switch all of my cities to building spies for a bit, crank up the espionage slider to 100%, bide my time for a few....then pillage every single resource tile in his empire on the same turn. Efficient? No. Satisfying? :D

Of course an actual army followed that mass spy attack...he was next on the target list anyway.

have you allocated anything from your commerce slider to espionage?

I used to play on warlords & now noble - i usually set 10% on the espionage slider right from the get go (after i meet my first opponent) and this usually results in me having enough esp points for most of their spy missions to fail.

Also on top of this - since the AI is really teching very poorly at the chieftain level you are way ahead of them in techs and they have no techs to trade with you so they probably use a lot more spies.

i would suggest you dont always research the cheapest tech (if you are doing so) and researech the important techs and leave some gaps to trade with the AI's. so you can then trade your more expensive techs with some cheaper techs.

Somehow i never really had much trouble with enemy spies at warlord & noble levels.