Help, yet again

WearyHeart

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 1, 2015
Messages
12
Location
Philippines
Okay I think I improved a lot more than before but i still have a lot to improve. Stil play on King, and i could win if i get a good start, but i just cannot win with marsh or jungle starts or no hill starts.

1. When people say meet other civs get Tech Bonus, is it really high amount of tech? Also does meeting CS count as meeting a civ for this tech bonus? Around how much does each "meet" reduce tech cost?

2. Also on expansions, how much workable tiles does an expansion realisticaly need? On my fourth or fifth expansions.

3. I find that on King I always need to build a city(s) near my neighbors real quick, if not THEY expand into me and start to covet my land. And if they expand into me, if I build a city (near me) they are mad because I built near them. I find that they will always hate me eventually. Also like civs are really really close to each other, i mean other ai capitals are like 10 tiles away from mine

I learned that this expansion builds archer first. Because its like in Attack on Titan, a "bait city". My neighbors will declare war, and target this city. This is where i usually station my troops. Also i i take their expansion luxes

4. At what population do you usually start your settler? I always wait till at least pop 4 before i churn settlers and wonder if this helps or unhelps my game.

5. Is it better to build all your settlers from capital? I find that if my capital shows thag it needs like 40 turns to grow from 7 to 8, i just build a settler instead.

6. How to steal multiple worker from a CS? If i am still at war with them they dont even send the settler outside their city.

7. My build order is usually, scout>monument>archer/granary>worker>settler if pop4>if not i make another archer. Help me improve on this. The AI seem to always out expand me.

8. My scout likes to die/ made useless by barbarians. He always bumps into barbs. He cannot fight the barbs, he can barely maneuver them. maybe this is because king AI does not clean their barbs. This is where i have a lot of trouble, in a pangea map i cannot meet most of the CS because barbs are magnetized to the scout. When the barbs start to fade, the ai borders block me and their open borders cost a lot.

9. I have a bit of trouble with Luxes, usually my expansion sites have duplicates of my lux instead of a fresh lux. But the enemy AI does not bother to i prove their lux until like turn 150. This results in me have like 5 cotton but the ai has like 2 gold per turn and no lux to trade. I find horses and iron to be quite useless. I only ever need 1 horse and most of the iron units, i rather just make bows.

11. When is the ideal time to build libraries? I onlybstart them in my capital at pop 6+. Is 2/3 science more valuable than say an extra archer? Also when do you start libraries in cities?

I cannot fathom how you guys do these t110 Universities and t200 plastics games. I mean I play king so it should be easier to do those but at t100 im still building the national college.
 
4. Before the tradition nerf two years ago, I would always get the first settler as soon as I reached pop 2. Now my normal build order is 2x scouts, monument into settlers.

6. If you check your own city border, you noticed it doesn't have vision 2 tiles away. Units can see 2 tiles away however. So you can park a warrior 2 tiles outside of the CS border and wait for a worker to move onto a resource to improve, then steal it. You can do this many times over. I don't know how early CS build workers on king, but on deity, it's ~turn 20.

11. I build them after granaries (usually) and after caravans/cargo ships are up and running. Granary is usually the first building in a new expo.
 
1. The tech bonus is only for techs the newly met civ has already researched, and I believed the vicinity is -5 or -10 % beaker cost for the tech. Don't quote me on the numbers. It's not a huge bonus except for early on high difficulty, where the AI has several extra starting techs. It'll knock off as many as 2-3 turns if you've met everybody and they've all got it and you haven't.

2. Varies drastically by build. Tall= something ridiculous and over 20, wide= a nice practical 10ish

5. You should always know exactly how many expos you want to have. All settlers out of the cap, and always remember to lock the highest production and gold you can balance for the lowest turns every time you build a settler. If you can't decide between a wonder and a settler, the answer is always a settler.

8. Careful how you move your scouts, be sure to move one at a time and favor hills for the vision. Stay away from known barb areas, and don't be afraid to pull back and heal. Caution before bravery.

11. Libraries aren't until after monuments, granaries, enough workers to get luxes up, luxes up, trade route compliments full, all expands established, philosophy tech researched or queued within 2.
 
Im not pretending that all my aswer will reflect optimal play, but it should still allow you to crush King level.

1. When people say meet other civs get Tech Bonus, is it really high amount of tech? Also does meeting CS count as meeting a civ for this tech bonus? Around how much does each "meet" reduce tech cost?

I cant answer the pecifics, but if you build scout-scout-and then the rest of your things on continent (even on pangea) it should let you meet every one quick enough to maxmize every positive effect you have from knowing other civs (science, trading partners, kind of know what they are planning ect.) Even if you perform a few ''special'' mission on your way to discover the world. (stealing settlers, escorting civilian units, protecting other positions etc etc.)

2. Also on expansions, how much workable tiles does an expansion realisticaly need? On my fourth or fifth expansions.

OK let me edit that... By reading other answer I REALLY misunderstood your question.... took it like how many GREAT tles you need.... I say like inthesomeday here. up to 20 if you are playing tall (4-5 cties) and as low as 10 if you play like 7-12 cities.

3. I find that on King I always need to build a city(s) near my neighbors real quick, if not THEY expand into me and start to covet my land. And if they expand into me, if I build a city (near me) they are mad because I built near them. I find that they will always hate me eventually. Also like civs are really really close to each other, i mean other ai capitals are like 10 tiles away from mine

You indeed might want to build those gap spot between you and AI ''very'' quickly if its a suitable spot for you. Especialy if you only have 2 more spot to reach a total of 4 cities. You may want to build a settler ASAP in those cases. If you go scout scout monument shrine granary worker settler usuly it will be fast enoug in any situation on King. If you really want not to miss it... you can skip a build. Can be monument if you are in tradition... or granary if you already have a heavy food start, a worker if you already stole one from AI or CS... you pick it up.

I learned that this expansion builds archer first. Because its like in Attack on Titan, a "bait city". My neighbors will declare war, and target this city. This is where i usually station my troops. Also i i take their expansion luxes

Indeed when you take ''his'' spot he might be a bit more likely to be upset. On K it should not be that hard to defend tho. like you said maybe put an extra archer somewhere in your building list. Keep a unit or 2 in the right spot and tadaaaaa.... done! Other thing I've seen lately is if you have to contested spots you want to build, them on the exact same turn. That way you avoid the 2nd upset.

4. At what population do you usually start your settler? I always wait till at least pop 4 before i churn settlers and wonder if this helps or unhelps my game.

Its usualy better indeed. Exception are when you REALLY need a contested spot.

5. Is it better to build all your settlers from capital? I find that if my capital shows thag it needs like 40 turns to grow from 7 to 8, i just build a settler instead.

Never build a settler just because you have nothing else to do or because you are starving! Very bad! you need a spot for that guy that will help you in the long term. Dont forget that you will have to sustain the unhappiness of that city. If ultimately its low prod, low cash, low science and prenvent your capital to grow because you lack of those lil smileys! BAD!
Plus, unless you are unhappy, I cant see no reason why it would take 40 turn to grow your cap form only 7 to 8. It means you are working the wrong tiles and probably also that you fail to improve the right tiles.

6. How to steal multiple worker from a CS? If i am still at war with them they dont even send the settler outside their city.

Personaly I dont do that. Especialy on King you dont need to. Steal one from CS. Try to steal every AI worker and settlers you can (dont go nuts, just when the opportunity is obvious) and take as much as you can from barb camps. You probably need to hard build one at least on King anyway because its so long before CS get theirs out. If you need more... build them or buy them. Also sometimes if you take one from barb camps, its better to liberate it for influence on a key cit state that you need as an ally on the long run. and if you do its also possible to drive aoround and force him to be kidnap by the barbs again, so you can liberate it a second time.
(BTW stealing settlers and workers from AI will almost dosent hurt your reputation. 99% of the time they will come back to you n like 10 turns, offer you peace and be super friendly. aslong as you dont take a city or backstab an ally, war change almost nothing)

7. My build order is usually, scout>monument>archer/granary>worker>settler if pop4>if not i make another archer. Help me improve on this. The AI seem to always out expand me.

Well... seem fine to me.... For me, its not a perfect rule but usualy it would be:
scout scout monument shrine granary worker settler settler.... 2 scouts and 1 warrior should be enoug to perform every mssion you need to perform in early game. Even with raging barb. Maybe you want to to buy or build and archer at some point in that list to help you out.

8. My scout likes to die/ made useless by barbarians. He always bumps into barbs. He cannot fight the barbs, he can barely maneuver them. maybe this is because king AI does not clean their barbs. This is where i have a lot of trouble, in a pangea map i cannot meet most of the CS because barbs are magnetized to the scout. When the barbs start to fade, the ai borders block me and their open borders cost a lot.

Well... honestly I dont know... ts not supposed to happen on a concistant basis... let me find a video that FilthyTobot made to show how easy it is to outdrive the Barb AI. BTW that video changed my life. (haha my civ5 life)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqg1jd39ON8

This guy is just unreal!! Enjoy!

9. I have a bit of trouble with Luxes, usually my expansion sites have duplicates of my lux instead of a fresh lux. But the enemy AI does not bother to i prove their lux until like turn 150. This results in me have like 5 cotton but the ai has like 2 gold per turn and no lux to trade. I find horses and iron to be quite useless. I only ever need 1 horse and most of the iron units, i rather just make bows.

I dont remember but its quite possible. I know its harder to find trading partners on King. No solution in fact. The important thing, is that periodicaly, especialy for your horses and unuse iron you checkout if you can get 2 gpt or 45 upfront from allies.
Only solution I can think off is sending your trade routes to them, so they will have money to trade with you... but I cant see that being a soluton really, and usualy in earl game I like to use my trade routes to grow my capital or to perform CS missions. Unless you also get a HUGE science bonus from sending it to AI. (wich is almost the case all the time lately since I play mainly Deity)

11. When is the ideal time to build libraries? I onlybstart them in my capital at pop 6+. Is 2/3 science more valuable than say an extra archer? Also when do you start libraries in cities?

Ok... again its not a perfect rule... but personaly, sometimes, I may build them as soon as a plant the city! Bang! If Im on tranditon of course...
If for example my plan is to plant 4 cities including capital, and I have only 3 good spots, its quiet possible to go plant plant plant as soon as possible.... build libraries everywhere as you are researching Philosophy and if you plan right you can actualy buil NC on turn like 80 (ok more like 90 with 4 cities). Then... you win the game! (almost)
Thats the long answer, the short one would be as soon as possible, after usualy a grnary to help you grow the city and be able to work more prod tiles. So you can build NC as soon as you get Philosophy. I would say the most important thing is to have a plan:
How many city I want to plant?
What tech I need before researching Philosophy?
How long it will take to get Philo?
When should I start building my librairies so Im ready to build NC when I get there?

I would add that even if arguments can be made to support that Liberty is more effective than Tradition on the long run, and that if you know what you are doing you will be on top of the Tradition civs blah blah blah... wich is all true, until you have a very good grasp on that game you should go:
open tradition
finish tradition
open 2nd tree (piety, patronage or esthetic depending on your intended victory path)
fill it until rationalism is available
open realism
fill it as long as you have no ideology
adopt an ideology
fill 6 slots (sometime 5 and you finnish it later)
then close rationalism
then do whatever you want

Only exception is when you plan to open honnor later anyway... you go
open trad
open honnor (to help you with the barbs and get the extra culture from the killings
fill trad
and then you put policies in honnor until rationalism
then continue on the same path as I suggested in the 1st example

might not be optimum in every situations, but you cant go tataly off track with that plan.

Hope it helps!!!
 
Much of what you are experiencing (particularly as compared to reports of games played on higher levels) is a direct result of the relative buffs given to, and performance by, the higher level AI civs. Not only do they start with more early techs, but they get buffs to building and unit construction speed, growth rates and other aspects that have the result of the AI on higher levels teching faster, generating more gold, generating more units, settling more cities, etc., etc.

What that means for a player at levels like King is that the AI will not expand as quickly, will not improve its tiles as quickly (so luxury trades will be slower to come and less frequent), will generate far less gold for trading, will tech much more slowly (reducing the "met-civ-that-knows-that-tech" research bonus and making research agreements all but worthless), and will not clear barbs as quickly, so barbs are usually much more distracting on lower levels than on higher levels. On the one hand, that means more opportunity to satisfy CS barb camp quests and liberate CS workers from barb camps (both good things), but also more hassle dealing with wandering barbs. It also means that external trade routes will yield far less gold and science than on higher levels (cramping your economy, slowing your tech rate), and (given the larger swatches of no-man's land, where barbs roam freely), your (and the AI's) trade routes will be pillaged more frequently (generating even more barbs in the process and requiring that you burn hammers to replace caravans and cargo ships -- cargo ships are particularly vulnerable on lower levels because the AI is pathetic about building ships to clear sea-going barbs).

CSs will generate workers far more slowly, so worker stealing takes longer and will be less frequent. CSs will also tech more slowly (since their tech rate is tied to that of the AI community generally), so their later game strategic resources (like coal and aluminum) will take much longer to be revealed and, if you go Patronage and Scholasticism, your Scholasticism beakers will be anemic, as compared to higher levels.

So, you might think you should be able to romp through the game at King, with blazing finish times, but that is really only true if you go Domination. Any other victory condition is likely to be slower on King than higher levels, and much more of a slog (at least as relates to barbs -- at Deity, all the barbs (except those hanging out in the Arctic) are usually gone somewhere in the turn 50-to-90 range, while that is definitely not true on lower levels).

As an aside, don't open Honor just to help you deal with barbs -- even with plenty of barbs as fodder for your units, you cannot possibly generate enough culture from barb kills to outweigh the increased cost of future policies, and the barb combat bonus is a crutch that you should not rely on. Far better to bang out early archers and go farm barb XP. Archer/scout raiding parties can be particularly effective, since you want to focus on barb-clearing CS quests, not farming culture from barbs -- one cultural CS friendship will generate more culture, and more reliably, than the Honor opener.
 
As an aside, don't open Honor just to help you deal with barbs -- even with plenty of barbs as fodder for your units, you cannot possibly generate enough culture from barb kills to outweigh the increased cost of future policies, and the barb combat bonus is a crutch that you should not rely on. Far better to bang out early archers and go farm barb XP. Archer/scout raiding parties can be particularly effective, since you want to focus on barb-clearing CS quests, not farming culture from barbs -- one cultural CS friendship will generate more culture, and more reliably, than the Honor opener.

Would you agree tho, that even on K, if you are planning to open honnor at some point because you aim mid/late domination, with a civ like, lets say, America or England, wich have good mid or late game UU, it would worth to open honnor early especialy if you enable Raging barbs?

Or it simply dosent worth it for culture and you better finnish Trad ASAP and get those 4 free Aqueduc up and running?
 
If you plan to take multiple policies in Honor (or even complete Honor), then by all means go ahead and take the opener.

If, however, the only Honor policy you plan to take is the opener and then turn your focus to other policies in Tradition, Liberty, Patronage, Commerce, Rationalism, etc., then don't bother -- taking the Honor opener will just slow down your policy acquisition.
 
oh ok we are on the same page.
Opener is not srtong enough to justify honor by itself. Certainly not on for cuture value wich will very fast become irrelevant.
 
Browd covered a lot of key points where tactics that work on Deity aren't as effective on King or lower. I do want to add a couple of things.

I've noticed barbs tend to be less aggressive very early in the game. They are less likely to come out of a camp to attack your Scout and more likely to pass your Scout by if they are roaming. I don't know why this is, but it is another reason to bang out two Scouts before you build anything else. On higher levels, AI cleans barbs up quickly. But on lower levels, barb activity actually goes up after Turn 20 or 30. The longer you wait, the more camps that spawn between where you are and where you need to go. Roaming barbs are also much more likely to harass you. You'll still have to deal with them on your way back, but hopefully you'll get an archer upgrade by then.

You can't rely on AI trades on lower levels, so you actually need to be a bit more picky with city placement. One more reason scouting is so important. You really want a unique lux for every city if you can manage it. The trade-off is that the AI doesn't expand as fast on lower levels, and you don't have to worry as much about picking city sites that are defendable because you just aren't going to get hit as hard by invaders. You can space cities out a bit more, keeping in mind the threat of barbs spawning in between.

The decreased benefits of trading with AI Civs on lower levels also make CS allies really valuable. The culture and growth bonuses are fantastic, and military units from CS allies help a lot with the additional barbarians you see on lower levels. You won't have the gold available to throw at them from selling luxuries like on higher levels, but you can really milk favor by killing barbarians. Never clear a barb camp anywhere near a CS unless the CS has a mission to do so. You can keep an archer nearby and kill the spawning units as they come up to the CS' borders. Letting them take a worker from the CS is great. You can rescue it and let it be re-captured and re-rescued to farm favor. AI Civs are worthless with barbs, so unless the CS is really close to your neighbor, you will have little competition for those barb quests.
 
Also, external trade routes are a waste early game on lower levels. You are far better off getting the growth bonus from internal routes. You won't get much if any science boost from routes to neighbors, and the gold is a pittance.
 
Also, external trade routes are a waste early game on lower levels. You are far better off getting the growth bonus from internal routes. You won't get much if any science boost from routes to neighbors, and the gold is a pittance.

especialy on K level...
only 2 exceptions I can think off, are CS quest that have a clear and safe path especialy if they might be key allied for whatever reasons. (strategic placement, mercantile if you expect to have happiness problems sooner or later, religious if you need to rush a religion, whatever you think you can fix by being friend or ally with them)

Or

If you have a neigbor like Babylon or Korea and you have a slow libraries start for whatever reasons and the science output would boost from 12 to 17 for exemple.

Wich totaly worth it... IMHO.
 
It's pretty rare to get trade route missions from a CS early on. There aren't going to be many close enough, and it is one of those missions you just rarely see early on. But it would certainly be worth it to gain a CS ally. The three or four GPT would just be icing.

I prefer CS trade routes mid and late game if you are playing King and have the tech lead, which you should. The gold is good with ships, you can spread your religion and you aren't passing beakers to the enemy. Only problem is you have to send a Navy out to clear the route because the AI is so bad about leaving barbarian ships everywhere.
 
I agree 100%...
There is not much substitute to early groth.
This is why I mention exception... I would also add that not only it would be needed to fullfill a quest but also that it would make the m valuable ally.

If its only for a useless small amout of faith per turn that you dont need. I would still send font internal TR.
 
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