Help a new player!

[Shadow Phoenix]

I used to be a huge player of Civ3, and recently decided to try Civ5 [as it was on sale].

I jumped in, chose a small map, catherina [cossacks are awesome, and they come at a perfect time in my settle everything, build barracks, build horsemen, up them all, conquer everything], and started playing. Hexagonal movements was very nice, the city structure is interesting and the border collision is intriguing. However, almost immediately I got on the bad side of Greece and have no money. In addition, my people are barely happy!

So I tried again. I did slightly better, but I have a feeling like I am doing something wrong. Can someone please check my save and give me recommendations? It seems like tile improvements are not the way to go since they cost money instead of giving you money like before.

Any advice would be appreciated .

[Shadow Phoenix]

Took screenshots if that helps at all! Please comment on what I can improve/how to win the game!

Map Overview

Spoiler:

Capital

Spoiler:

Economy Overview

Spoiler:

[Adjuvant]

You do not need to connect resources with roads. Roads are only for connecting close-by cities for trade routes or facilitating unit movement. If cities are more than 5 hexes away rule of thumb suggests wait for a harbor to connect them, but I guess that's not always true.

Crop your city growth until you have excess happiness in which to grow. Switch plots from food to hammers to finish coliseums faster.

Your city sprawl is "ok" considering what you're given, but if you're going to sprawl at 4 hex distances you need liberty policy for meritocrity.

Speaking of which, I don't know which policies you've chosen, or which buildings you have in which cities. I find it particularly odd that by 160AD you have next to no military.

When you start over, only build the shortest roads possible between cities, crop city growth so you aren't just "spawning population to pay to keep them happy" and make sure you're choosing applicable policies.

[slo]

I am no expert...but you asked...
1. you have too many cities, on a standard map I usually end up with 6 cities or so of my own, the rest I take from other civs...you get a -3 happiness for each city!! and more unhappiness for each person in each city..
2. only build cities near resorces that will keep each city happy...even if this means wholes in your boarders...just the way it goes now...I ALMOST never build a city that cannot keep itself happy particularly your first 3 cities...they MUST be on resorces for happiness.
3. like they said..roads cost you alot of money. only use them to connected your cities for trade routes...and if possibly dont build any roads if you can use harbors...they are cheaper...
good luck..
slo

[Adjuvant]

Originally Posted by slo

I am no expert...but you asked...
1. you have too many cities, on a standard map I usually end up with 6 cities or so of my own, the rest I take from other civs...you get a -3 happiness for each city!! and more unhappiness for each person in each city..

slo

This is fundamentally true, but if you look, his northern city has dyes, eastern has whales and he started with gold and cotton. I likely also would have made the western city for iron, but then I'd be using it. I think you have a point tho about the location of St. Petersburg. It has no luxury or strategic resource and is a happiness-sapping population center with little other return.

[Kabloosh]

I'm usually expansionist and I think he probably expanded too much at the same time. "Try" to limit expanding if you can help it to key locations you think you want.

I expand for 3 reasons.

1. Resources is what I will expand the most for. I don't really expand for strategic resources until coal starts becoming available since I tend to factory spam.
2. Strategic reasons. I want to prevent a civ from expanding to future land I may want to expand to later so I essentially wall off the area or there is a choke I want to occupy.
3. Third reason is more towards late game where I want more income and I have more happiness more than I know what to do with. So I'll make a city purely for the intent of bringing more money into my empire. These cities usually end up on islands. I try to keep them relevant to the 1st 2 reasons.

When it comes to happiness management it helps to be going after policies that provide it.

All 3 beginning policy trees offer happiness but you should pick 1 of the 3 depending on how you are going to grow your empire.

Tradition. Go this first if you are aiming for a small empire. I suggest trying to get 4 cities down before you get the one that gives 4 culture free culture buildings for obvious reasons.
Liberty is for the big empires. This is a good one to start with and should of been the tree you went down to.
Honor. I like to sometimes go down this one if there is tons of barbarians and I found its a nice off tree to dig down when you are mainly working on tradition and you have policies you don't want to use yet(like on that blasted 1 that gives 4 free culture buildings). You can even get happiness from garrisoning units. That or you can go into the next few trees once you unlocked a few other eras.
Piety is great if you want culture and your culture buildings will get you happiness or you can go rationalism which will allow your science buildings to gain happiness. Commerce is only good if you have lots of coastal cities so kind of avoid this one unless you are gaining policies real fast. I tend to go down it after I have rationalism or piety done if I'm an coastal empire. Otherwise I'm probably in the industrial era already and I start working on order or I go back to either tradition or liberty which ever one I did not get. I only ever get honor if I'm aiming to be militaristic.

Also always build a military. Having at least ranged units such as archers would be a smart idea. These alone can really put the hurt on an enemy. I steer away from cavalry cause the computer spams pikemen like its going out of style.
I kind of aim for a main overall focus for my empire. For example if I'm focusing on teching I'll build science buildings first then production/growth buildings(science is dependent on population size and production allows me to build things faster). Gold production is a close 3rd and can overtake growth type buildings once my cities reach a certain population(ex. 6+). I also like to turn certain cities into certain specialized cities. 9 times out of 10 my capital is a production based city since I like to get some wonders fast. I don't usually change it until I unlock the great library which is generally the first wonder I go for. This also helps stem growth keeping your happiness high allowing you to plot down more cities so you can grab strategic resources. My other bigger cities I tend to make them focus on gold since gold is so OP in this game. I ignore culture buildings cause I can make it up through being allied with the cultural city states(I do this for the maritime city states for growth as well so I can ignore things like granaries) and the wonder spamming. Gold also allows you to quickly upgrade your units into higher tech units which allows you to stomp your enemies since they generally will be using lower tech. Plus it allows you to do research agreements. Aim for at least 2 other Civs cause you may fall behind that guy cause hes making agreements with other civs which can make you fall behind him leaving your only option to catch up is to attack him.

[gunslinger6792]

mods always help to if your like me and you cant keep you ppl happy past prince difficulty.

[Shadow Phoenix]

Thank you so much everyone! It seems that you can't spam cities as civ3... and can't spam roads :/.

So, just one more question, is this game winnable at all?

[smallfish]

Yes, just don't spam roads

What is your tech level? Do you have crossbowmen and Longswords yet?

[gozpel]

I have nothing better to do tonight, so I'll play 20 turns from your save and I really hope I'll improve it.

First off, don't build roads except to cities, you don't need to hook up resources as before by roads, just build the mine, farm or plantation and it's your's. So I'm going to delete a few roads with the existing workers. They should really do better stuff than that!

We have a Neutral AI in Alex, I'm going to sell what I can to him and also build a few more units.

Happy is tough, but a few turns of unhappy won't kill you until you reach -20, at -10 cities are stopped for growing and you can't build settlers anymore.

Get back in a little while.

[Adjuvant]

I've never tried this, but can you pillage your own roads so you don't pay maintenance on them?

Never thought to do this, hmm... a worker in a spot building improvement, finish improvement, pillage, repair, pillage, etc would easily beat the cost of the worker maintenance.

Exploit, or constructive use of game mechanics?

[The_Quasar]

Originally Posted by Adjuvant

I've never tried this, but can you pillage your own roads so you don't pay maintenance on them?

Yes, and I sometimes do after taking a puppet...

[gozpel]

Steam docked me out again, but it's very simple as I did. For the first 5 turns at least.

Delete extra roads, focus citizens on production, get your markets down and go libraries.

Connects horses, sheep and cattle, build stables there after you research HBR.

At turn 5 I was like 5gpt plus already, by deleting unnecessary roads.

This game is very winnable, but I never even tried quick before, so maybe a few units?

[gozpel]

I still have the game, but stopped reporting after the game lagged forever, started it up again and am taking Greece with LS, but that is not what this story was about.

The post above is still valuable for turn 10.

[Shadow Phoenix]

Originally Posted by gozpel

Steam docked me out again, but it's very simple as I did. For the first 5 turns at least.

Delete extra roads, focus citizens on production, get your markets down and go libraries.

Connects horses, sheep and cattle, build stables there after you research HBR.

At turn 5 I was like 5gpt plus already, by deleting unnecessary roads.

This game is very winnable, but I never even tried quick before, so maybe a few units?

Thank you so much! I will definitely try that. I've been reading the rest of the forum and figuring out how it works. I am missing the civ3 theory of 'railroad all the things!'.

Can you please post your latest save? I would love to compare how it fares to my land accomplishments.

[gozpel]

Just before we take out Greece!

I think this the right save, I have too many saves just sitting around.

From here, you can just kill them and if happiness is still a problem, you need to read some of the awesome guides that are available on these forums.

I put you in a good spot, don't lose it!

[Shadow Phoenix]

Originally Posted by gozpel

Just before we take out Greece!

I think this the right save, I have too many saves just sitting around.

From here, you can just kill them and if happiness is still a problem, you need to read some of the awesome guides that are available on these forums.

I put you in a good spot, don't lose it!

Heh. I was a couple turns ahead of you, but I was still negative on money [albeit with a slightly larger military and less science]. I took your turn as it was far superior. The land was also developed differently.

thank you for your help! The game is definitely winnable.

Here's the current state of affairs.

Home island. Greece has been defeated after a short battle. The city state to the left has been defeated for being a cry baby, other two were nice and so were kept.

Spoiler:

All tiles are worked. All cities connected by railroad, being careful to only go shortest distance.

Spoiler:

Invasion. I saw an empty space, and it had 2 world wonders, plenty of wish and cattle, so I quickly sent a settler to take it. It proved a great place for launching campaigns, so i have 3 helicopters and 3 tanks ready to attack. Also, 10 stealth bombers and 2 missiles are waiting their turn!

Spoiler:

This city-state has been taken over with the whole purpose of dyes. We need dyes for happiness, so our glorious armies sailed and took a city. We also fortified it so no neighbors decide to steal our things.

Spoiler:

Here's the tough part. We are missing gems, and only aztecs have gems. However, they want an arm and a half for them, and I don't think I am ready to attack ;/.

Well, I'll see how it goes. So far so good!

[Shadow Phoenix]

I am thinking that I will strike at them and take the gems once I get death robots backed by nukes. They'll have to listen then.

[gozpel]

Good job!

You should've won this already, no reason to stop for conquest when you're sitting like that. In this case spam units and overwhelm your foes.

Really, who cares about gems when you have over 40 happy?

Back to oldsave: You have a better army than I did, but I put you in like 30gpt+. One thing to remember, another unit, another coin you have to pay. So I directed everything in the country to gain coin, and deleted every road I could see that wasn't necessary. My tiles was for every city, in what they needed first. So a different management, of course, but remember to make your cities special.

City1: Good for settlers and wonders.
City2: A good production city.
City3: A good science city, and 4 would of course be a decent goldcity.

If you can! I meddled a bit with your cities and the outcome many years later speaks the proof.

I won this game 200 years ago, but have no save. When you dominate, you do just that.