From Emperor to Demigod
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it sure is.
AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
Idustrial : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-eb5os4iw :O
Sorry to resurrect an "old" thread but have a few questions that should've been asked before:What do I need culture pops for? Or cathedrals? 6 luxes is usually not a problem, on Demigod the AI is fast to connect all their resources, and they also build harbors (contrary to the lower levels...)
If you can't get 6 luxuries, build horsemen instead of temples and then go capture those resources. That solves your happiness problem much more efficient than temples and cathedrals...
Research still works ok up to Deity. Of course you will be behind during the ancient age and most of the medieval age, but by the end of the medieval age you should have caught up and be the tech leader, even on Deity. I prefer doing my own research, benefiting from reduced tech costs (get many contacts!) by researching tech known to everyone, or if I see a chance to get a monopoly tech before the AI does (see alexman's study on AI tech preferences - or was it Bamspeedy?!), I go for it and try to trade tech for tech instead of gpt for tech. That only makes you more backward. Also, once the AIs start warring with each other, there will sooner or later be a beaten down backward AI that will trade tech for tech with you. (Start fomenting wars on the other continent early, while they still can't get at you...)
On these levels you simply have to get used to "playing from behind" for quite a while. Also, lack of horses/iron can be overcome by a poor-man's army of Longbows, Trebuchets and Spears. Quantity instead of quality...That can be quite effective.
1) In an earlier post (#13) you mentioned you don't need Temples. Here you say you don't need culture pops either. So are you depending on the Capital's culture pops from the Palace to give your other core settlements extra tiles, at least in the first 100 turns?
2) In a recent Emperor game as Pachacuti with large Continents (selected randomly, as with all other parameters except the map) on a Standard map there were only 3 separate Luxury types (with multiples of each) on mine, which was shared with Elizabeth and Temujin to the east. Hannibal was on an Island further east with 2 Luxury types (Gems and Silks) accessible by Sea. The other Continent, isolated by thick belts of Ocean tiles, was practically useless for trades or invasion.
Fortunately Ivory near Cuzco enabled Temple of Zeus and its AC. Yet even after seizing unclaimed Dyes in Jungle and Wines from conquest while trading for Hannibal's Silks (he only had one Gem) that made for only 4 Luxuries in the whole Incan Empire. In the meantime Pachacuti felt obliged to pacify his unhappy subjects with Temples, even Colosseums to make up for inadequate benefits from Marketplaces.
So was this wrong? Should the Luxury slider have been cranked up to, say, 40, even 50% to compensate? Certainly wouldn't want the core to be turning Citizens into Specialists just to avoid Anarchy. OTOH wouldn't want to crimp Research either.
3) Regarding Tech trading, are you suggesting any GPT deal should be avoided?
Thanks for your kind attention Lanzelot, and for all the other contributions you've made to this fabulous game. Cheers!
P.S. Alas, the screenshots are missing from your Asterix Training Day Game. You'd think with the bazillion-byte storage spaces available these days it would be a mere bagatelle to keep these treasures for posterity. Still a lot of useful info from commentary, links and such.
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
No: assuming founding immediately and no other Culture built, your capital will hit 100 Culture on Turn 100, giving you a 3-tile radius. So even if you've only been settling at Cx(x)xC (distance 4.0 to 4.5), your 1st-ring towns will still have expanded your borders nearly twice as far again as the Cultural influence from your Palace.
Also, when you place towns at CxxxC on (or near) the diagonal axes, you'll acquire ownership of any 'extra' tiles between each town's initial 3x3 block, which will get filled in by your Culture even without a border-pop.
Finally, bear in mind that for those first 100+ turns, your 1st-ring towns still won't be very large, either: if your Civ is Agricultural, then maybe Pop4-5 in the older, freshwater towns. So most of them won't need a full BFC's worth of tiles to work, not by a long shot.
Spoiler Re. resource-tiles on land/coast :
Spoiler Re. Food-bonuses on Sea-tiles, which will only become usable after a border-pop :
Continents and Arch-maps do make (trans-Oceanic) Lux-acquisition impossible, that's true. But assuming you've gone to Republic (and if not, why not?!?), then your (core-town) commerce-bonus should mean that you shouldn't need to run LUX% that high, at least during peacetime. If you only need to keep a few of your core-towns in order, then turning those few unhappy citizens into Specialists is usually preferable to raising LUX% across the board — but turn them into Geeks if possible, and still try and keep that town growing (positive net FPT), even if only slowly.
If you really 'need' 40-50% LUX to keep order in all your core-towns while at peace, then that suggests that you've already let those core-towns get too large for that stage in your game; so rather than turning 'excess' (core) citizens into Specialists, it might be better to turn them into Workers/Settlers instead, while also building military out of your still-happy smaller towns, until you've got a large enough stack to go conquering. By expanding aggressively over as much of your immediately available landmass as you can hold, i.e. going wide before you go tall, your doom-stack can expand your access to resources, your free-unit allowance, and your empire's effective total income (by using Specialists in the conquered areas to research/raise funds). Provided you're careful in your choice of targets, and don't expand futher than your production and supply-lines can currently support, you won't get much in the way of WW, or need to spend much on LUX% to counter it, and you'll still be able to rack up useful beaker-numbers.
Prolonged (and/or careless) warmongering might require higher LUX%-settings, but if WW is getting that bad, it's likely better in the long run to make peace: if you've been winning, you may be able to force concessions from your victim, such as their towns or techs. OTOH, if you're losing, then you'd be aiming to arrest those losses before you get steam-rolled, so you might just have to bite the bullet and concede whatever is demanded, up to and including one of your own towns (try to fob them off with one of the newer/ less-useful ones, though!). That will (with any luck) at least give you 20T breathing room, allowing you to regroup and rearm (the conceded town can be recaptured later). Once you have your landmass conquered, and/or sign PTs with any surviving enemies, any WW-effects will go away, and LUX% can be safely dropped again.
But also consider this: before overseas AI-Civs can sail Sea/Ocean tiles safely, they won't. So send out those suicide-Curraghs early! Provided you've already managed to locate them, even if they DoW you, you're safe from being attacked and you get War Happiness into the bargain!
And not only are DG and Deity AI-Civs faster to build Harbours than at Emperor, they're also capable of (much) faster research — which means that they will get to Astro/ Navi (both of which the AI likes) in a reasonably timely fashion. After they learn those techs, you can make peace with them, and buy their Luxes instead.
No, absolutely not! Initially you might want to be able to buy the most advanced AI-Civs' techs for gold or GPT, but only if you can be reasonably sure of recouping your investment by selling it on to the others (another reason why early contacts are so important). And once you've brokered your way into the tech-lead, you'll want to slow the AI-Civs' ability to research further, by siphoning off all their available income in exchange for your (older, more widely known) techs.
*Edited for clarification*
You might like to have a look at our current SG (Large Continents-map, 60% or 70% water, DG: we're Portugal, and aiming for Space, with all 9 Scientific Civs as opponents), for an example of how well the above tactics can work:
Spoiler Tootly-toot-toot :
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tjs282 has the answer:
A temple costs 60s and adds between 3-12 new tiles to your empire. A settler costs only 30s and can add around 16 new tiles to your empire, if appropriately placed. Here an example as illustration. The following settler adds 14 tiles to your territory (not that this is a particular good spot - in fact, in the actual game I settled 1 tile further west to connect the incense, but it's a good illustration):
You see: in addition to the usual 9x9 square, 5 more tiles became available for the two older towns Grand River and Yekaterinburg, without the need to build any temple there!
Of course there is no "one size fits all". There may be exceptions, where luxuries are indeed a problem, but you should be able to recognize these situations early enough to provide remedy, e.g. make plans early enough to get the Hanging Gardens, or if you see that many luxes are not tradable because of ocean, make a beeline to Astronomy, etc.
But in general, 4 luxuries in the middle age should be plenty. I wouldn't build Temples/Colosseums in that situation. 20% on the lux slider (as a Republic) should be sufficient, not? And by the time you really need more luxes, Astronomy should be available.
There are situations, where it might make sense to buy a tech for your own gold, e.g. if you see that you can resell it immediately afterwards to 3-4 other AIs to regain your investment with interest. But in general yes: the AI should be giving its gold to you, not the other way around...
With every forum software upgrade I seem to be one of the unlucky fellers who always lose their attachments...
I had already restored the screenshots once a couple of years ago, but with the last upgrade to XenForo they got lost again. I still had the screenshots for my "Republicans" and "Gandhi on the Rocks" stories on one of my older desktops, but can't find the ones for the Asterix game anymore I still have the one I used at that time (2010) somewhere in the basement, though. If I have a little time, I can reactivate it and check...
Yow! My head is spinning with these revelations: Diagonal settling to increase tiles under cultural control. Avoiding more than one improvement under Despotism in core towns. War Happiness from distant AI DoWs. Trading gold for techs only when they can be traded immediately for more gold and techs. Beelining to Navigation for trans-oceanic trade in the MA. Plus a bunch more that I'd forgotten since Emperor level doesn't punish mistakes or bad habits too severely. Thanks for your expert advice guys!
@tjs282 : Yes I almost always go for Republic. Looking at your current DG game now which should reinforce what you and Lanzelot said.
@ Lanzelot: You suggest the Hanging Gardens to relieve unhappiness but it requires Monarchy. Won't the AIs research it and build HG ahead of you, especially if you're focused on Republic? .
@tjs282 : Yes I almost always go for Republic. Looking at your current DG game now which should reinforce what you and Lanzelot said.
@ Lanzelot: You suggest the Hanging Gardens to relieve unhappiness but it requires Monarchy. Won't the AIs research it and build HG ahead of you, especially if you're focused on Republic? .
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If the AI researches it for you, even better! You will certainly be able to buy it for Republic and then convert your pre-build into the Hanging Gardens... (You have planned ahead and started a pre-build in time, didn't you?
With a well-timed pre-build you can always get any wonder you want, even on Deity.)Of course an alternative is to let one of your neighbors build the Wonder you need, and then go and capture it... For this, just make sure that you trade the tech that enables the Wonder, only to AIs that a close enough... (Works with any important Wonder that does not depend on being built in a productive core city to yield its benefit - like Pyramids, Great Library, Hanging Gardens, Sun Tzu, Artemis,...)
Pleased to announce that after about fifteen years of vain pursuit I finally got that elusive Demigod win (all random settings on Standard map). Special thanks to Lanzelot, tjs282 and justanick for their expert advice and walletta for asking the right questions. Except for starting location don't have any saves from early game but here's a couple from early Modern, after Smokey's invasion force landed with six Armies (2 Cav and 4 Tank) to seize the second Continent.
BTW Suleiman had finally cracked to Incan pressure and adopted Fascism but when Smokey's troops took him on he was still so advanced he had TOW Infantry and was building the UN plus Manhattan Project. Beat him to the UN on a pre-build and destroyed his Metro core before he could finish MP. Couldn't have done it without those Tank Armies (eventually had 6 of 'em). Artillery doesn't have much effect against fortified TIs with defense strength of 31 just on level ground so single tanks would've died like flies. It seems on Demigod one can never rest...
BTW Suleiman had finally cracked to Incan pressure and adopted Fascism but when Smokey's troops took him on he was still so advanced he had TOW Infantry and was building the UN plus Manhattan Project. Beat him to the UN on a pre-build and destroyed his Metro core before he could finish MP. Couldn't have done it without those Tank Armies (eventually had 6 of 'em). Artillery doesn't have much effect against fortified TIs with defense strength of 31 just on level ground so single tanks would've died like flies. It seems on Demigod one can never rest...
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You can only rest after you have assured that the AI rests in peace.
Congratulations! Here's to many more!
I have not seen that option in CivAssist. Can anyone tell me how to access it?
Also, I can't use CivAssist while I'm playing the game. It doesn't appear on the screen. I always need to quit the game, then open CivAssist. Any advice regarding that?
a) Not exactly sure, what walletta meant, but the way I use it is for tech deals: when swapping techs or buying/selling tech for gold, I check the "current" price of the techs as displayed in CivAssist, so I know, whether it is a good or bad deal for me. (Not that it would matter much: most of the time I'm glad to get even something out of a tech, even if it's only 10g. And sometimes I even gift techs to the AI, e.g. in the following situations:
b) I have the same problem on one of my laptops. But no big deal: just start CivAssist first and then Civ3. Whenever you need to look at CivAssist, press the "Windows-Button" on the keyboard. Then you can cycle through all currently running programs, including CivAssist, load the current auto-save and look at whatever you need.
- They are scientific and I want their freebee. Sometimes they are so backwards, I have to gift them a whole era...
- I want them to build (or cascade into) a certain wonder for me, but they don't have the prerequisite for that yet
- I want to conquer them, but they are still in Despotism. In that case they would pop-rush a spear in every town, as soon as I declare on them, making it harder for me to capture them, or making it even impossible for me to capture some of their towns, because they pop-rush them down to size 1 and then they auto-raze, when I capture them!
Also most of their (former...) towns still suffer from the pop-rush unhappiness, once they are mine, so it takes longer before they become useful.
All of this hassle can be avoided by simply gifting them Republic the turn before (for all their cash). No more pop-rushing for them, and they can't cash-rush either, as I got their gold, and as an added bonus, they'll be in Anarchy the first couple of turns of war, so no building units either...
- I want them to research techs for me that I don't know yet, not to waste their beakers into techs that I already know.
b) I have the same problem on one of my laptops. But no big deal: just start CivAssist first and then Civ3. Whenever you need to look at CivAssist, press the "Windows-Button" on the keyboard. Then you can cycle through all currently running programs, including CivAssist, load the current auto-save and look at whatever you need.
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I suspect he was thinking of the Tech tab. It has a column label est. cost. IIRC it list the price of the tech in beakers. At least that is how I est. its value. That does not tell you how much you can get for the tech, only what it cost you at some point in time. The beaker cost has many factors, one is the number of civs you know that know that tech. The only way I know of to get what the AI will pay is to use trial and error and keep adjusting your offer till you it the AI's max.
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