Ambitious First King GEM

Flash1 · Apr 14, 2014

Okay, I've never played Civ V much. I just got BNW a few weeks ago and I decided to give it ago. I fired up a GEM map. I have 39 civs no CS set-up, king difficulty, and Marathon. Playing as Rome w/Liberty tree. Only one ruins I can get, it adds one pop to Rome.

I have a total of 6 city-sites planned including Rome. I can get to all spots but money is a serious problem. Getting ready to go into the red. I have been trying to research info here, but could use any advice I can get.

Oh, I have 3 workers, 3 Archers, 2 warriors. Trying to build road between cities and the capital. Currently have 4 cities total. Still managed a Pantheon.

S.O.T MAHak · Apr 15, 2014

In BNW your major source of revenues is through caravans and cargo ships. You should build some immediately and send them to other civ's cities or cities-states to generate some income.
Cargo ships cost more to build but gives you a bigger trade income. Needless to say they can only be built in coastal cities and only be sent to other coastal cities.
Caravans are cheaper to be built, but gives less income in return.
Remember that barbarians love to plunder your trade routes so don't send them through territory where they might appear, a solution to this is to send out some units to guard the routes and make sure no barbarians get to them.
You can also use your trade routes to send :c5food:

to your own cities and make them grow faster. A good balance is to have some trade routes to generate some wealth while using the rest to grow your capital(that what the Romans did historically).

Flash1 · Apr 15, 2014

So, I need population badly. I guess I misunderstood unhappiness. In my current city operations, 5 out of 6 possible cities are on the coast.

Myth and Legend · Apr 15, 2014

Don't settle so many cities early on until you get a handle on unhappiness. With Liberty you have it hard (no Monarchy to give you free happiness), so aim for diversified luxury resources when you settle. Ally a Mercantile city state the first chance you get, as well as a Maritime one (to help you grow tall).

Get Animal Husbandry and Bronzeworking. The strategics they yuild you can sell for 2 gpt (but you have to sell them 1 by 1) or if you have a declaration of friendship, you can get 45 gold per resource as a lump sum immediately.

Make sure you build shrines in your cities and get a faith pantheon if you can. For your religion, get Pagodas and you will be set for happiness.

Flash1 · Apr 15, 2014

The last save is from turn 179 marathon. YNAGEM.

Okay status:
Pantheon: Messenger of the Gods will be picked.
Science: +10;
Gold 42 (-3) : soon after I started building Roads from the three cities to the capital I rapidly ran into -14 gpt. I started playing sell building, rebuild.
Unhappy at 5 when Rome hit pop 3.

All cities had Monuments and shrines.
Rome hit pop 3
Antium hit Pop 2
Milan hit pop 2
Aquilae pop 1

I had 3 Archers, 1 Scout, 2 Warriors, 2 Workers (added a 3rd)

Techs: Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Archery, Mining, Bronze Working, The Wheel, After that went Calender (wine) (Rome), then was going Trapping (had Truffles) (Antium). Milan had silver just outside boarder, but wanted to connect toward Rome. Each city was about 3 tiles between cities in a wide T pattern. I had marble in the area.

Flash1 · Apr 15, 2014

This is my condition as of the last save file.

Also found out I need to move the location of Milan. it sits on top of the only City ruin I ever found on this map.

S.O.T MAHak · Apr 16, 2014

Only judging by your screenshot:
You need to move your workers and have them improve the silver south of Milano and the wine north of Rome.
Screw the extra horse resource for now you already got 2 horses but no horse-requiring units.
Also don't build barracks unless your going for the heroic epic national wonder. 15 xp for 1 gold per turn is not worth it, at this early stage.
Instead build a caravan in rome in send it to France for some quick cash and remember to build the important buildings in rome quickly so your other cities will get a bonus when they build the same buildings.

Edit: "City ruin"? did you mean ancient ruin? or did you raze a city and built Milano on the same location? Either way it doesn't matter at all you don't have to move Milan (which I presume means loading an autosave from before you built Milano).

Flash1 · Apr 16, 2014

oops, yeah, the ancient ruin is under milan. at this point gold was a problem and the idea was to build the barracks and sell it.

can you archeology dig site under a city?

S.O.T MAHak · Apr 16, 2014

I thinks you've mixed up ancient ruins with antiquity sites.

Ancients ruins are gone forever once someone move an unit into them.

Antiquity sites are first revealed later in the game once you discover archeology.

IIRC antiquity sites will never spawn under cities.

Flash1 · Apr 16, 2014

I was reading on another site, that you should keep track of where you popped a ancient ruin because that is where the "Antiquity sites are first revealed later in the game once you discover archeology."

S.O.T MAHak · Apr 16, 2014

hhhhmm I don't know about that. But the civilpedia says that some sites will spawn if there has been a battle there in a previous age.

Flash1 · Apr 16, 2014

Latest Sceenshot After Restart.

Turn 218, and in Golden Age

Now have 6 cities. Expansion is now finished for awhile. Now I need to build up Cities, Gold, and Tech. Right now Teching to currency for market (Gold). But other two options where Sailing (cargo) to Compass (Harbor); or work for Iron Working.

After the horses are hooked up I'm heading to get the Marble on the right.

Any Suggestions?

beetle · Apr 17, 2014

Flash1 said:
Okay, I've never played Civ V much... I have 39 civs no CS set-up, king difficulty, and Marathon.

Change settings one a time. Until and unless you have several many games under your belt, multiple choices away from the defaults will almost certainly result in a poor play experience. Bump up the difficulty level gradually, you might well fine with king, but messing with the number of civs and turning off the CS means you are not playing the game as designed, and (win or lose) it is much more likely than not that the results will be less enjoyable.

Flash1 · Apr 17, 2014

Beetle, You have to understand the goal of this experiment.

I'm using the GEM. I'm not a fan of CS, I really don't like them. I prefer my opponents to be traditional civs and this map works until I get a bigger map. And besides it has been a wild ride that I like. So whose to say I'm not playing as intended. 39/43 civ ain't bad. Try competing with many regular civs. lol.

However as much fun this particular game is, finding the balance between competion, expansion, culture, gold and happiness, etc. has been challenging. Especially since, I've managed one source of gold per city.

TurboJ · Apr 17, 2014

Hmm, IMHO, the city states are there to help you, not to compete with you. First off, they provide you with free workers (by stealing), then experience for your military, then happiness, food, units, the list goes on.

Of course sometimes the CSs can be a pain too if they have taken the exact city spot that would be perfect for you. If that happens, you could always conquer that single CS and be friends with all the rest. Sorry if this is OT to any degree.

Flash1 · Apr 17, 2014

TurboJ, no, its not OT, good discussion.

Civ V, over the coarse of the expansions, took many of the CS names and put them with regular civs. CS might work well on a random map, but for the purposes of this map don't work well in europe. If I ever get around to messing with the TSL file I might put in some CS like Jerusalem. There is some serious tensions in europe right now. however, a few CS to slow down some other areas would be helpful, mostly the other civs not me necessarily.

But this an experiment afterall, changes can always be tweaked later. Thinking the netherlands might need to go.

ravenmagus · Apr 17, 2014

Flash1 said:
I was reading on another site, that you should keep track of where you popped a ancient ruin because that is where the "Antiquity sites are first revealed later in the game once you discover archeology."

This is actually true; antiquity sites do like to spawn beneath where you found ancient ruins, but if you found a city on top of them it won't appear. So you could quite possibly lose one antiquity site there... but it's still just a chance, and it's not too big a deal in the end.

Rome needs to get started on important buildings, and you really need to improve those luxuries ASAP. Negative gold isn't a big deal - not as big as happiness, anyways; if you want to solve gold, build some more trade routes (caravans/cargo ships). Get started on those luxuries immediately, though, and try to found your new cities near more.

Flash1 · Apr 17, 2014

Ravenmagus,

So what happens when you go negative gold?

As I continued the game, I'm building Ballista's and started a few Chariots to replace old units. I founded a Religion w/free GP (Liberty). I got Currency then BW on IW now. I don't know if it was a good thing... traded wine for 790 gold for 90 turns shortly before circus. building another circus in another city.

beetle · Apr 17, 2014

Flash1 said:
Beetle, You have to understand the goal of this experiment.

What is the nominal number of divs and CS for GEM? Nothing wrong with changing the ratio or turning off CS altogether. Marathon works well for larger maps there, so thats good. But you are changing lots of variable without much play experience. The predictable result is that the game will not be much fun. You would better served IMHO experimenting more with the CS on standard size maps, rather than trying to have the penultimate civ experience right off the bat.

ravenmagus · Apr 17, 2014

Flash1 said:
Ravenmagus,

So what happens when you go negative gold?

When you go into negative gold, you'll start to lose some portion of your science per turn. Everything else functions just fine. Supposedly the game will start forcibly disbanding your military units if your negative gold per turn becomes large enough at 0 gold, but I've never had it happen and I've been pretty deep into red before. You might have to stay negative for a really long time before that happens.

Ambitious First King GEM

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Warlord

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