C2C - Tips and Tricks

Hydromancerx

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Not sure why we never made one for C2C but here we go.

Please post your tips and tricks you have found while playing C2C. For example ...

- Build other buildings or units on top of already building the Cave Dwelling wonder. Once you unlock Oral Tradition civic finish building the Cave Dwelling wonder and you can switch over to the tech during a free Golden Age without an anarchy penalty for switching over.

- Use Thieves and Rogues to take out Neanderthals. They cannot see you so you can heal right next to them without them attacking you.

- Beeline to Shelter Building tech to unlock more buildings and get the most out of other techs.

You get the idea. Please post your own tips and tricks you have learned while playing C2C.
 
I like using Australia for the financial and charismatic traits. That being said, I can't seem to keep up with the AI with city growth. They will be at 40-50 city size and I am stuck in the 20's because of madness/unhealthiness. For a tip, I always use my first great general as a great commander so he starts getting upgrades right away - near midgamr with some decent troops, this guy is unstoppable. Help with growth would be appreciated...
 
In my latest deity game (C2C_PerfectWorld2 mapscript, pangea allowed) I ended up in fairly decent land (Kelp, lots of it, helped) and upon reaching Bronze Working, I changed civic to settle 7 cities with pre-build settlers right away, in a pincer movement.
A little later, I built the Great Wall and 1 turn before that I used some troops to claim the tiles between the cities that were still unconnected. That way, I ended up creating a small wildlife-habitat inside my great wall, which has no inner ring, by the way.

As I have great wall and no barbs can enter it, inside this enclave there will unlikely spawn any barbs, so the Orang-Utan, seen on the screenie wandering around inside will have a good life, as long as my watchdogs manage to keep any enemy ambushers out^^

So, my "trick" for this thread is: if you want a huge chunk of land on a pangea, plan it:

-Go for tech to enable more cities (Bronze Working or Monarchy)

-Pre-build settlers + archers and move them to the places so you can settle the turn you get out of anarchy.

-Only build as many cities as you can pay for. If you have 3000 gold in your treasury and after settling some cities your deficit is -85/turn with 100% science rate, you can leave that rate at max for about 40 turns or so - use that time to build gold buildings and even out the deficit. Remember that -Xgold/turn makes revolutions more possible.

-If you manage to get lots of animals (for example via a wildlife reservation^^) you can built gov's pets and gov's menagerie in more cities to handle that revolutions index.

-Claim chokepoints after you got fixed borders. Avoid open borders if you don't need the money badly.
 

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With the density of neanderthals in recent versions, I have been learning how best to use my thieves and rogues to keep things under control (as per Strategyonly's suggestion). The key is to get them promoted adequately. Once they have a few combat and anti-melee promotions they are utterly lethal to the Neanderthals (I've literally killed hundreds on neanderthals with two rogues in the latest game). To achieve the promotions I use trackers as bait - park them in good defensive terrain in neutral territory with your rogues nearby. The trackers will tend to survive for a while, winning more defensive fights then they loose if you choose good defensive spots (wooded hills), but that's not really the point (the points towards great generals are welcome of course) The idea is actually to sacrifice the trackers (works equally well with scouts really, but you need a two movement unit to move flexibly as the sea of Neanderthals ebbs and flows). Keep your rogues (or thieves but it becomes much more effective with rogues) nearby to make easy kills after a Neanderthal kills a scout/tracker. This way you can get them their first few promotions with little risk, after which they can start to go after Neanderthals directly when they move into open plains or grassland. Eventually you wind up with 99.86% odds attacking a neaderthal on wooded hills!

I also find that two super-unit rogues maximally promoted like this, are quite sufficient to dull AI attacks in the relative early game. Provided you spot an attack stack coming two rogues will decimate any stack likely to be sent at you pre swordsmen.

This probably won't work for too much longer (will in v14 but not too much after that) because I'm going to tweak the AI to use it's own stealth units way more aggressively, and to encourage it to include a see-stealth unit in it's attack stacks :p
 
A little trick regarding the early stages of the game: If you can't build anything else or need gold and you can't afford 100% science either (yet), don't use "build meager research", instead "build meager wealth". you can get up to 3 science/turn more, if you build wealth and elevate science rate a few % by the surplus it's somehow more effective than to build science and lower the science rate for more income (see screenie 1 + 2). I tested it in several games now, always same result.

Can anyone explain? Can/should it be fixed?

EDIT: I found the explanation: it's because of the effects of early +% science buildings like Knowledge Inheritance & Tribal Councils +25% science which increase exponentially along with the science rate. So it is confirmed: to keep those effects for a higher science rate you have to build wealth - building science on the other hand doesn't really help building science at all but reducing it effectively - as long as you can't keep the science rate as high at the same time...
 

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My tip would be to utilize ones golden age as much as possible in the Ancient to Classical Eras. There's a bunch of decent Civics to be had right after each other.

First make sure you have a Great Person to make a Golden Age with (and don't use it for GA at Bronze Working or Monarchy).

Tech up some of the usual techs in Classical leading up to but avoiding Writing.
Get Polytheism and Aristocracy (can fiddle a bit if able to get the Oracle to get Aristocracy for free once Caste System and Monarchy are done) but only if you intend to use Bourgeois.

Finish up by teching Writing.
Now use the GP to start your GA. Change to Monarchy or Despotism (whichever fits best atm), to Written traditions and possibly to Bourgeois. Maybe Prophets or Divine Cult too if not already switched to a State Religion so you can switch to a State Religion.

Within your Golden Age you should be able to tech Alphabet, Currency, Mathematics, Monotheism and Meditation (not necessarily in said order) for Open Borders, Coinage, Patrician, State Church and Church Civics, being able to switch to those Civics without any Anarchy.

That's 8 Civic changes and possibly getting a State Religion during your Golden Age.

Cheers
 
DRJ; Instead you can go for Petroglyphs after Cultural Identity and use Lesser Research.


Also to explain: Research from City Build doesn't get % bonus from other effects.

Full explanation of effect:
Spoiler :
With % :science: from Knowledge Inheritance, Elder Council and Civic Oral tradition every :commerce: is worth 1.55 :science: whilst :Gold: is a solid 1 for 1.

This means that reduction of Commerce to Science reduces your Science more than it increases your Gold. Being able to NOT reduce Commerce to Science output thus keeps your Science higher as the city's Meager Research is not affected by Science % bonus.

Meager Wealth is unaffected as by this time you still have not got any +% to gold buildings.
 
If you have Meso. religion or shamanism, which gives you bonus to archer units. Build tomahawk throwers for alot of free xp, then upgrade them to axemen :)
( you ofc have to have preq. for building these units :) )
 
Hint - Great Farmers can give you MASSIVE benefits in conjunctions with certain corporations (Cereal Mills for example). In fact this may be rather over-powered, though it takes a while to get it going...
 
Tip #1 - You may not want to build all the prehistoric buildings. For example Carrion may give you food but it also is unhealthy. Mushrooms too you may not want to get until you research Herbalism or Tidepools until you get Cooking. In which point they get a +1 Health to counter the -1 Health.

Tip #2 - Put off making the Cave Dwellings until you can get Oral Tradition and Native Language Civic. Then right before you get ritualism finish the building. It allows for the Golden Age and you can quickly get Cultural Identity for the Elder Council thus boosting your science rate greatly from the boots from the 2 civics plus building Elder Council. All without having to go into Anarchy for changing civs.

When you do this is up to you. You can try to hold out and get chiefdom during your golden age, however the longer you wait the longer you are with a lower science rate. Thus an early beeline to ritualism may be more beneficial in getting other techs faster from the science boost.

Also don't forget you can always make your cities produce beakers if you are lagging behind.
 
2 quick questions on some early-game moves for everyone:

1) Bandit Hideout. How early do all of you build this? The +5 gold seems not terribly necessary to me so far (with 1 whole death under my belt), and the -5 espionage cancels your palace out totally. But the units seem very handy. Can I build it, build a few thieves, and sell it off?

2) With so many more early Wonders/National Wonders, are the limits per city relaxed? I'd hate to have my capital be the prehistoric center of the world, and then unable to build anything later.
2b) Do Nat. Wonders obsoleted by tech get removed from this count?
 
2 quick questions on some early-game moves for everyone:

1) Bandit Hideout. How early do all of you build this? The +5 gold seems not terribly necessary to me so far (with 1 whole death under my belt), and the -5 espionage cancels your palace out totally. But the units seem very handy. Can I build it, build a few thieves, and sell it off?

2) With so many more early Wonders/National Wonders, are the limits per city relaxed? I'd hate to have my capital be the prehistoric center of the world, and then unable to build anything later.
2b) Do Nat. Wonders obsoleted by tech get removed from this count?

1) I build it early because the thief line (once it gets to rigues which isn't long) is devestatingly effective if dilligently promoted up with low risk early fights. Invisible units are a great way to deal with Neanderthals also once promoted a bit

2) 6 Great Wonders, 5 National Wonders per city. They still count even after they go obsolete, so you do need to be at least slightly careful.
 
2 quick questions on some early-game moves for everyone:

1) Bandit Hideout. How early do all of you build this? The +5 gold seems not terribly necessary to me so far (with 1 whole death under my belt), and the -5 espionage cancels your palace out totally. But the units seem very handy. Can I build it, build a few thieves, and sell it off?

2) With so many more early Wonders/National Wonders, are the limits per city relaxed? I'd hate to have my capital be the prehistoric center of the world, and then unable to build anything later.
2b) Do Nat. Wonders obsoleted by tech get removed from this count?

1)In my most recent game I tried to wait untill I had full visibility in my concurrents cities so I could see exactly what happens. It will take a very long time until they will be able to get more spy points, and chances are that the other nations will have built 0 spy points against you so intelligence upgrades on enemies are very cheap. Afterwards I build the bandit hideout as you dont need any more spy points until writing (spies).

I feel I can cope with the enemy invisible units if I place my units on strategical places or on resources/develloped land. However this requires a good economy and possibly you will have to lower your science bar. Note that I also only use this tactic BECAUSE all AI nations build bandit hideouts ASAP

2)I never had this problem of wonder limits before, because I havent reached the late game in any C2C game before and I tend to specialize my cities a bit so the wonders are built in the city of their specialization.
 
This is kind of OT, sry for that. But I don't know where else to place it...
How can I build an underwater tunnel? I know I am supposed to use a workboat for that but I've never seen any option in its menu to build one. I don't see any icon there for tunnel building. And I played a lot of scenarios and never seen one :( There is no mention about it in sevopedia. What do I need to build a tunnel? Perhaps I have just never been technologically advanced enough. Thx
 
IIRC it is only modern workboats that can do them, so you need to get to at least that far in the tech tree before you can do tunnels
 
Research Tips:
Unless my starting city is suffering massively from disease, I will bee-line to cave dwelling, then oral tradition (building the caves while I research), then tracking (for trackers and animal subduers galore), then tribalism (for the expansion), then hunting (for better subduers and camp power (if in city radius) from tribalism), then petroglyphs (for the lesser research) then BARTER (it seems a bit out of the way, but it gives +1 commerce on every improved tile, making it one of the most powerful techs in the ancient era (maybe even a little broken)), then chiefdom for lower maintenance costs and expansion, then straight to sedentary lifestyle. With this path, even on immortal difficulty, I always am the first to research sedentary lifestyle (even if my hunting for myths hasn't been the most effective). From there and for the rest of the game, I am always the tech leader, sometimes miles ahead of everyone else.

One thing that should definitely be changed:
Alphabet gives the player the ability to build research, which gives 50% of :hammers: to research. Petroglyphs gives the player the ability to build lesser research, which gives 67% of :hammers: to research. That's totally backwards! Maybe make alphabet's research give 80% :hammers: to research instead?
 
IIRC it is only modern workboats that can do them, so you need to get to at least that far in the tech tree before you can do tunnels

I do have modern workboats. I am researching currently lunar exploration and microprocessor. I wonder how far do I have to get to be able to build them..
 
Research Tips:
Unless my starting city is suffering massively from disease, I will bee-line to cave dwelling, then oral tradition (building the caves while I research), then tracking (for trackers and animal subduers galore), then tribalism (for the expansion), then hunting (for better subduers and camp power (if in city radius) from tribalism), then petroglyphs (for the lesser research) then BARTER (it seems a bit out of the way, but it gives +1 commerce on every improved tile, making it one of the most powerful techs in the ancient era (maybe even a little broken)), then chiefdom for lower maintenance costs and expansion, then straight to sedentary lifestyle. With this path, even on immortal difficulty, I always am the first to research sedentary lifestyle (even if my hunting for myths hasn't been the most effective). From there and for the rest of the game, I am always the tech leader, sometimes miles ahead of everyone else.

One thing that should definitely be changed:
Alphabet gives the player the ability to build research, which gives 50% of :hammers: to research. Petroglyphs gives the player the ability to build lesser research, which gives 67% of :hammers: to research. That's totally backwards! Maybe make alphabet's research give 80% :hammers: to research instead?

What version are you running?
 
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