Need help in late game decisions (save file included)

I've attached a save file, so if anyone has time to look at my current situation, I would appreciate it. DLC - Brave New World

Short summary. I have not had any victory conditions planned for this game. This is my first relatively successful game on Emperor difficulty. I conquered all Maya cities on my continent making them into puppets, allied myself with several city states and Egypt + England (I have DoF with them and they accept my defensive pacts). Civilizations that are a threat to my success are China (out of my reach) and Venice who I'm currently targeting for naval invasion. Venice is located close to my continent and I think they only have assimilated one CS. Unfortunately, Venice has grown strong and my army is not better than theirs (my spy uncovered them perma-building battleships and carriers). They have also been a tech leader or at least one of the more advanced civilizations for the past few dozen turns. I believe they will attack me sooner or later despite defensive pacts and my increasing army size, so I want to at least take them out and have a positive learning experience.

Should I throw all my power on them in hopes of capturing Venice and getting ahead in points race? I have no other options as my science is inferior, culture is practically non-exsistent. My religion is the strongest in game, I managed to overthrow Mayan religion in mid-late game.

Any other comments you can provide based on my save are welcome.

I have played up to year 2010 and managed to capture Venice using battleships, carrier with 4 bombers, 2 artilleries and a few punching bag infantries that Venice could bombard. It took me about 8 turns to bring down their defenses.. they had 202 shield points . Currently a few points above every other civ in the standings, my only victory option at this point. Might have to switch all production to military permanently.

Before capturing Venice I had -17 unhappiness.. Fixed that, currently at 0.

Did you want a certain victory?

asura_ said:

I have not had any victory conditions planned for this game.

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No victory conditions that I wanted to pursue. I need an advice on what I did right/wrong

Well, few things in no particular order:

1) you don't run specialists - that means way fewer great person spawns (and to make things worse - specialists are run by the computer)
2) You don't have Granaries in your cities and other basic ancient era (and later ofc) infrastructure
3) too few policies, no rationalism (but piety instead)
4) too low science and tech rate in general (that mostly function of 1) 2) and 3)
5) Antiquity sites in your theritory, that are not made landmarks.
6) not all puppets connected by road (unpillaged) to your cap
7) too many unsold resources
8) papal primacy as founder, when you don't go patronage is basicly pointless. The good founders are basicly two : Tithe (always) and Pilgrimage (if you intend to spread heavily).
Rest are either too situational, or completely useless.

9) The best thing in Piety is the reformation belief, and you don't have it ...
10) too many random roads that cost you GPT (you can remove road tiles with a worker)
11) marshes near river in decent spots to run +4F farms.
12) hills on rivers, that are not farmed.
13) unemployed citizens


I can add more, but think thats enough things to think about

I will go trough them as listed, I didn't even know some of these were wrong.

1) you don't run specialists - how much extra food per turn is optimal and when can you sacrifice hammers/food for specialists. Do you have to fill all specialist slots?

2) You don't have Granaries in your cities and other basic infrastructure - I abandoned granaries in early game as I had no wheat/ bananas/ deer in my territory - first 3 cities. Forgot to add later. My production was usually spent on building I needed the most and military.

3) too few policies, no rationalism (but piety instead) - This is sort of an experiment. I wanted to have a strong religion. No reformation because I spent all my culture on ideology. This is due to my weak culture. I need to learn how to generate more. I missed out on all wonders I think, due to being behind in tech and hammers.

4) too low science and tech rate in general (that mostly function of 1) 2) and 3) - this I know and noted in my description.

5) Antiquity sites in your theritory, that are not made landmarks. - I thought later in game with my lack of culture/tourism this was pointless to explore.

6) not all puppets connected by road (unpillaged) to your cap - I thought they were, at least on my continent, I conquered Venice after that save file.

7) too many unsold resources - I sold all that I could, AI won't make good deals anymore.

8) papal primacy as founder, when you don't go patronage is basicly pointless. The good founders are basicly two : Tithe (always) and Pilgrimage (if you intend to spread heavily).
Rest are either too situational, or completely useless.
- I don't think I'm going with religious gameplay next time, because it doesn't benefit me in a way I imagined.

9) The best thing in Piety is the reformation belief, and you don't have it ... - made a decision to expand Ideology tree.

10) too many random roads that cost you GPT (you can remove road tiles with a worker) - These are a leftover of roads built to conquer Mayan cities, I forgot to remove them.

11) marshes near river in decent spots to run +4F farms. - This is something I missed, which cities in particular?

12) hills on rivers, that are not farmed. - So these hills should always have farms?

13) unemployed citizens - I remember checking on those regularly while in peaceful game, but wars made me concentrate on military units. This can be fixed

1. general rule - run only scientist slots as soon as they become available (and you have at least 10 pop when u get univercity). culture specialists - too, but be careful, so you don't stop growth. Lock all good food tiles (those that give at least +3 food).

After that lock all +2 food tiles, and if you have any leftovers - use em in the remaining tiles with MAX output. Like 1F1H2Gold or mines etc.

Its best to just lock all tiles you work and check em from time to time. The more food - the better.

2) Granary should be build early always, no matter if you have wheat/deer or not
3) You can have strong religion without piety, but you need a faith generation pantheon.
If you run the culture specialists, thats a good way to increase early culture. Other thing is to ally cultural CS (top priority).

5) the landmarks actually provide culture
6) well - check it out, some of the mayan cities are not connected. the road symbol is missing
7) good or bad, its better to take 2gpt for a lux, than having 10 copies of it unsold ...
8) having a religion is nice thing, you are not supposed to spread it outside your borders to have a good bonus for you
9) Reformation belief is the best piety thing, you chose another piety belief instead of it.
11) near Bagdad i think
12) hills on river with farm give you +2 food after civil service, so these are the hills you want to work in the early game, as you get some hammers without sacrificing growth.

13) just learn to lock all tiles and set manual specialist control, and everything will be fine

Gl

2. Granaries are important because they facilitate the use of a hill/mine while still allowing growth. That is the reason why many players will like to even rush buy granaries. Wheat, deers and bananas locations are just even better.

3. You should always reach for secularism in Rationalism at minimum.

6. He's repairing the missing link

13. This is a turn based game no reason to be distracted

9) I think Reformation is only unlocked when you complete all of the policies below it.

I was wrong about Venice, the AI has at least 3 CS included in the empire. I've already settled for peace but I'm planning to use the same tactic that worked on their capital to get other cities. Just need to build army up. Egypt is supposed to fight China at the moment - they accepted my offer to go to war. Scientific victory might not be possible for them now. Diplomatic victory is also locked - I stopped Venice from gaining allies and we have 14-16 delegates each. No one is culturally influential enough and no one will be able to get domination, so I'm going for points, just need to conquer more land.

Reformation requires 5 (4 + opener) policies in Piety (not 6). It justs unlocks when you chose it in that tree.

asura_ said:

... and Egypt + England (I have DoF with them and they accept my defensive pacts). Civilizations that are a threat to my success are China (out of my reach) and Venice who I'm currently targeting for naval invasion.

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Just a quick note - most people dislike Defensive Pacts as they will give you negative diplo modifiers from other Civs (might be part of why you aren't getting better trade deals). Plus you get sucked into any wars Egypt or England become engaged in (not sure if it includes wars they start?). It is preferable to bribe others to war, especially at higher difficulty levels. So perhaps you could have bribed someone to DOW Venice, hopefully drawing their troops away from you, which will make your war go better. Better yet, try to bribe Venice to DOW someone away from you - draws some of their units away and Venice takes the diplo hit, not your pal.

I was able to defeat Venice in a 20 turn war starting at 2030 AD. Doing that earned me almost 2400 points which is over 300 points more than Egypt had, so I won the time victory. Not the best way to win but this is my first win on Emperor. I managed to propose nuclear nonproliferation and it passed, so no one nuked me in the process. With my army of X Com soldiers and missile cruisers, attacking Venice's coastal cities was easy once all their regular troops got cooked.

If anyone wants to see my save file on the last turn I can upload that later. I think I got the idea of how to efectively wage war with AI. It is the culture, science, gold generation and production that I'm lacking.

T50 T100 T150 save files are much more important to give you pointers than T500.

For standard speed. If you play quick, it's 66% of these numbers.