How can I deal with the spanish?

enter`name`here

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 8, 2004
Messages
12
Ok here is the situation; I've been trying to make the monarch to emperor jump but as of yet have been unsuccessful. My latest attempt I felt I had a pretty good grasp on the expansion phase, unfourtionatly I have no iron (I haven't started with iron ONCE since I moved up to emperor). Its a archipegio small map with 5 other civs. Spain my closest neighbor, they have the statue of zeus, the knights templar, iron, and recently cavalry. My army consists of hoplites and longbows. Desperate for iron I decided to launch an attack on my french neighbors over seas, just as my army was in position to move the spanish declare war.....
I try to move my forces that were down south into position to defend but they were hopelessly out of place. My front-line defenses hold for a few turns but soon the city of Phocaea falls, It was defended by 3 hoplites, it got taken out by 3 conquistadors! DAMN YOU RNG! I'm not even joking. To make matters worse the city contained a luxury and in 1010 AD my empire went into civil disorder.



After I saw this I said to myself "Oh what the %#!(*!@#&$ mother-!@$!son of a !@$%" and promptly left the game. After awhile I needed another civ fix so I decided to try and salvage this game. I lost Pergamon and Eretria before I got them to agree to a humiliating peace treaty. Leaving 4-5 hoplites in all my cities on the spanish border I moved south in hopes of getting that precious iron from france. I managed to snatch up some early victories and secured some iron, great I thought All I gotta do is build a harbour to connect it to the rest of my empire. Confident that things were turning around I ended my turn. The spanish declared war and in the first few turns destroyed my horribly outdated garrison. Knowing that bringing my troops back from france in time to stop this was mission impossible and realizing that some of my more productive cities were threatened I simply quit. It is now that I turn to the great veterans of CFC to help me. I will attach the save where things started to go downhill, when I lost my luxury city. Here is the situation on the front lines:



Is it possible to make a come back? If your wondering why I am in despotism it is because if I switched to monarchy or republic unit support killed my economy. also I don't have saltpeter either(figures).
 
It is VERY possible to come back from where you are in the game right now. You just need more infrastructure, a better developed core and to end that war with the Spanish right now. I tried playing a bit on your save and ended up going about 30 turns to the start of the Industrial Age at which point I had technological parity. (Good news: you DO have coal.)

Here's what I did immediately on opening the game:
1. Declared a revolution -- there's NO WAY that depotism is the right government choice for you. The tile penalty is brutal as is corruption. We're in our golden age, but I figure that probably just started and we desperately need to get into a real government. Republic is almost always the right choice.
2. Consolidated my position against Spain (this meantly mainly reinforcing the two border cities, doing safe attacks against the crusader stack, etc.) and made peace (I got do this on the second turn).
3. Moved the stacks of useless and regular units back to core cities for disbanding where the shields will go to good use. You have WAY too many regular units (NEVER build non-artillery without a barracks), and something like 6 (!) regular warriors sitting in Marathon eating up gold. I disbanded all the regular units and some of the other useless ones which brought in major GPT.
4. Start building Aquaducts in all core cities or cities growing with 5 or more citizens (bring unit support up and get the cities to a decent size). Then build Libraries, Markets, Universities, Harbors, Courthouses (as necessary). I stopped all unit build orders because infrastructure is the essential thing now.
5. Start the Forbidden Palace. This really should have been built by now - you want the FP as soon as possible to reduce corruption across the board. I built in it in Sparta after disband rushing an Aquaduct and giving Sparta some of Athen's bonus grassland to work.
6. Start trading for techs and luxuries. The French, Indians and Carthage are all behind the leaders Spain and Scandinavia by a bit. Use that to your advantage, buying techs from the leaders to sell to those who are doing worse for a discount on essential techs, etc. I also bought France's two extra luxuries for 25gpt. It's a steep price, but it let me reduce the luxury slider for about the same savings in gold.

I never traded for iron or saltpeter since I managed to avoid war with Spain, although France has extras. I kept most of your army stationed on the border, gave in when they came with a demand and never insisted they leave. You don't need the resources until you can start building units, and the infrastructure needed such help that that wasn't possible.

At this point, I would expect to be around Replaceable Parts before I feel the need to start building an army to destroy Spain with. Once you get to the industrial age you'll need to build the standard rails and factories. Infantry + Artillery + Cavalry, all of which can be built quickly once you get your core up, should do wonders.

If you want me to post my save, I can, but I think you can go on without it and would probably improve the most without looking at a "cheat sheet" of sorts. Even the loss of Eretia and Pergamon shouldn't be too significant a difference as those were mostly corrupt tundra cities.

Oh, and by the way: Longbows and Hoptites are not a way to fight a war. If you find yourself ever resource deprived again, you need to learn to make good use of artillery units. A large stack of Trebuchets could have allowed you to hold your ground against Spain even with the inferior units.
 
Very good points from Stephan Hoyer :goodjob: ,I couldn't have said it better.

Just a few more things about how to improve your economy.

The secrete to a thriving economy is simple: a lot of citizens working on fully improved land.

Right now, you're lacking both. It's already 1000AD, yet your land is only about 30% improved, and your cities are at half their maximum size. So here is what you need to do to fix the economy:

1) You have only 11 workers at 1000AD. That's not nearly enough. You need to build more workers, and build them early. A good number to shoot for is 1.5 workers per city by the time your civ enters the Middle Age.

Early in the game, one of the first things that a new city should build is a worker. The worker can improve tiles around a city, so that everything else that the city builds after the worker will complete faster.

2) You're using specialist (entertainers, taxmen) and not using luxury tax. As a result, all of your cities are not growning. Using the lux tax is like buying population with money. Eventually, the extra population will pay back the money invested with the extra production and commerce that they bring.

I've raise the lux slider to as high as 40% in a peaceful, early Middle Age situation before. But that's okay, since even though it kills my research now, it helps me becoming stronger later.

3) You're struggling with unit support. What's the #1 way to create more unit support? Grow cities! Republic unit support is 1/3/4 for city size 6-/6-12/12+. For Monarchy it is 2/4/6. In both cases, growning a city from size 6 to 7 creates two extra unit support.

What typically happens in a early Republic, is that the economy will suffer initially because of unit support. But with each town that becomes a city, you should notice your gpt jump by 5 or 6. 4 of those increase is due to the two extra support, and the rest is because the new citizen also gathers at least 2-3 gold.

5 to 6 gold per turn may not sound like much, but if the same thing happens to a lot of cities, then the benefit will quickly add up. If you have 10 cities that grow to size 7, and complete their marketplace as well during this time (each marketplace will add around 5-6 gpt for a size 7 city), that's a total increase of more than 100gpt to the economy. And this can be accomplished within the first 10 turns of switch into Republic.

The key to growing to size 7 quickly is 1) build cities on fresh water, and 2) having a lot of workers, and irrigate grasslands to promote growth. The key to building marketplace quickly is pre-build. Start on a courthouse or coliseum 15-20 turns before
currency is researched, then once we get currency, switch everything to marketplace.

So, to solve unit support problem, the first thing to do is to build more workers! Yes, it will make the problem worse in the mean time, but more workers will help you solve the problem much faster. Then, focus on building aqueducts. And lastly, build marketplace in productive cities.
 
Napoleon: all you need for war is money, money and money.

You're on a Golden Age and you're only making 96 gpt with the lux and science slider down to zero ? You need to make more money pronto.

Why are all those river tiles without roads. roads are your friends, they allow commerce which brings in more gold. river tiles add an extra gold per tile.

Use the luxury slider and forget the entertainers, all your citizens should be working.

What are you doing in Despotism ? Why trigger a GA in despotism ? You ought to be in Monarchy or Republic to maximize the effects of your GA.

Have you built marketplaces ?

End the war now, asap. Forget the Spanish ... for now.

Build your infrastructure, make money, modernize your army (knights or cavalry). You have too many hoplites. You need more offensive units wiyh movement points (horsies). Trade with your neighbours. And only then declare war and crush the spaniards.
 
Ok I reloaded, got peace with the spanish. I went into a republic and started building infrstructure. I bought a bunch of techs for gpt untill I got to the industrial ages. Steam power was my free tech and I noticed that noone had electricity. I started researching it as much as I could and managed to get it before anyone else. I traded it for nationalism medicine industrialization the corpoation iron furs and gems. Not bad, however a few turns later the spanish declared war again they were giving me furs ivory and gems so I lost 3 luxs meaning I had to up my lux slider. I JUST got nationalism and am still mainly defended by hoplites, I upgraded my border cities to rifles but they are simply going around them.



I have given up hope on the cities north west of that mountain chain, I would like to hold onto marathon because it has some nice production but I don't know if its possible. I switched my core cities off of factories and onto rifles, I've bought saltpeter off of france for 46 gpt and 136 gold in order to start on cavalry. Things are looking pretty grim they have fast moving units and I have to set up something quick. Conquisadors are scary when all you have is hoplites :blush:. I'm thinking I should either abandon the cities and move my rifles to defend my core cities or I could leave 1 defender in each city to distract the AI while the rest move south although this would mean they would get them. I don't know how long it will take them to acknowledge my envoy but hopefully I will not of lost any good cities by then.



I had a MPP with france but I doubt they will be of much help the AI doesn't fight to well across water. *Sigh* I was just starting to research replaceable parts, I probally would of been the first to get to it too....
 
Try to make peace with the spanish ASAP and don't start another war untill you research RP and get many artillery units. With a huge artillery stack you can defeat the spanish easily. Right now you are making a lot of money, so you can upgrade more hoplites and just wait untill the spanish agree to make peace.

Now that you have Steam you should build rails everywhere, so switch all your towns to workers. After you get Sanitation and build Hospitals you can join them to your core cities.

Another important advice that was not mentioned before: you should irrigate some grassland tiles once you are out of despotism. "Mine green and irrigate brown" rule is only good in despotism because of the tile penalty. In republic you should irrigate some green tiles to make your cities grow. Aim for +5 fpt everywhere untill your core cities are all at size 12. You can also build workers in corrupt towns and join them to core cities. I try to get my core cities to size 12 by 500-100BC.
 
I don't think you're toast, yet. Upgrade to Rifles and defend your empire: rifles have excellent defense and you should hold out okay (be sure to upgrade vets first). At all costs though, you must defend Hellcarnasus as it's your only source of coal, though if it's a certain loss disband and rebuild it. You'll want to keep Marathon, too, if possible.
 
I would have rushed the core cities factories, because in a republic you use money for rushed builds and your making it up fast. The factories would speed up production for rifle spamming.
 
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