How do these people do so well so quickly???

This guy ranks no.1 in my current game and it looks like he recently branched out and started a new civ as the Egyptians. He's obviously a very good player, but I just don't get how people do so well so quickly when I seem to struggle just trying to build up population after playing for days and days.

His partner in the game hasn't played for 6 days, so he's pretty much left on his own, but it doesn't seem to hold him back!

Here's some screens....I hope this person doesn't mind me showing them...I just genuinely want to know how this can be done?

I noticed he's at war with pretty much everyone, so I guess that's how you can get the advanced techs, but how do you go to war with civs in the beginning when you don't have the techs to get a powerful army?

He's not at war with me yet, although if he reads this I'm sure he will be!

You are talking about Chia he's a monster

The rest of us in the top ten have no hpe of catching him, but here's the deal.

Early game, he was independant still became very strong. Then joined India a strong civ and played most of the game with them.

He left India yesterday and joined Egypt. He can do that because he is so huge, he can run a civ on his own, but he cant take on either India or us (greece) or even rome. He can take on most of the smaller nations.

Early on after growing his cities, Chia exclusively focussed on production, he would use it to build his army and also sell it in the market and buy ither resources which were cheaper.

BTW - playing the market right is key to sucsess in my opinion. Always watch the prices, when a price crashes buy no matter what the resource and when the price sky rockets sell.

Cool insight, thanks!

So after you leave a Civ, you can start or join a new one and you still have the techs etc you gained from the first Civ? I guess that would make sense.

He just visited my pathetic little Civ, so I'm sure he's gonna come knockin with his army pretty soon!

**Edit**
Although, that said, I probably have nothing worth stealing so he may not bother.

if youre worried he'll attack, sell everything you have research, food, culture and buy production and only build LB's + Phalanxes. (unless you have rifles) + few galleys and some knights. Your main army should be LB's + Phalanxes those are best for defense.

No he doesnt take the tech with him, but he takes his enourmous production capability, which allows him to motor along in a small civ, with only two players i guess he quickly takes over all the ministries and finds it easier to operate than in a larger civ.

I asked him and he said he wanted more of a challenge so he left india

BTW - I still owe you one, so if he attacks maybe i can help you defend, but not too sure if i can do enough to hold him off all on my own without my team mates

PS - if you reading you know i love to mess with you Chia

My first game is kinda experimental, trying to work everything out and how to place farms to optimize food etc, so I'm not too bothered about this game.

Kinda looking forward to the end of this game, so I can get started properly in a new one.

Cheers anyway though!

Looks like India's gonna get to Communism first! You have a plan??

If I had to guess one thing most players do that would hold them back, it'd be that they upgrade all their buildings. Don't upgrade your buildings unless you are certain they can service at least 3 or 4 houses efficiently (very close with good happiness). Lumber mills in the midst of a lot of forest are often good candidates. I've gotten to the point where I think its only good to create one ginormous granary in order to get one food house very high and hope to lure in some dowries in addition to the extra production it gives you.

Rather, build more small buildings that maximize efficiency (adjacent to the resource and a house which has at least a couple happiness sources) and save all that excess production for troops. That is the path to domination. Build up your stacks of 100's of troops while the people you fight that are busy upgrading every little building throw up much smaller ones because they have very little production left.

Obviously a university should always be upgraded, but the one above is not ideally positioned. He did it because he must have created a ginormous library before village green was available, then built a ginormous village green, and then replaced the library with a university because he didn't want to move the village green or build another. But you should want to build your university in a spot where you have space on all sides (with a ring of forest/water around), and here the palace is eating up a quarter of the territory. I've gotten to the point where I often won't even bother building a library for precisely that reason, cause I'd rather just wait til code of laws / university are available and find the most ideal location.

Panda_Power said:

My first game is kinda experimental, trying to work everything out and how to place farms to optimize food etc, so I'm not too bothered about this game.

Kinda looking forward to the end of this game, so I can get started properly in a new one.

Cheers anyway though!

Looks like India's gonna get to Communism first! You have a plan??

Click to expand...

Yup, we finished a couple of mazes to pull ahead and win the race to communism. Another important thing to note, all team members should not waste their moves on the same maze. it should be coordinated so that one guy has a go and the others save their moves for the next maze.

However note that when you complete a tech your maze moves reset.

Shafi-is-back said:

Yup, we finished a couple of mazes to pull ahead and win the race to communism. Another important thing to note, all team members should not waste their moves on the same maze. it should be coordinated so that one guy has a go and the others save their moves for the next maze.

However note that when you complete a tech your maze moves reset.

Click to expand...

Nice one! Well done!

I thought I read in various posts that people were advising to have all your teammates in the same maze when you complete one and that way, when it's completed everyone gets a bonus!

What you're saying seems the complete opposite. Not doubting you, just want to make sure I've got it right.

One person in one maze at one time, right?

Theres two approaches to playing this game, one is to obsess with your personal score and always think about what you as a individual get out of it, the other is to completely consider it as a team game an just worry about winning the era's.

I think all of my team mates fall in to the latter category, i can honestly say not once have i felt in the slightest bit that any of them were worried about their personal bonusses and fame points.

However, i can also tell you that, by ensuring that we win as many eras as possible six of the our 11 players (although we have 13 now, two guys joined yesterday after we removed closed borders) are in the top ten last time i checked.

So even your personal score does do well when your team wins. But with our approach you prolly may not come out as the overall winner ...

and yes one person in a maze at a time. Its best from a team point of view.

another trick we used. we would all sell our culture and crash the market price and our culture minister will buy it all up for cheap so that he could pop GP's

Don't forget that if you have a small civ, no wonders and no tech, then no one is going to get anything from attacking you, nor will you lose anything by not defending.

In game 302, Egypt KEEPS attacking my civ, even though we have nothing that they can get, and are too small to give them a Dom victory. Why are they doing it? I have no idea. But in that case, defending just wastes production.

i would go further by saying unless you one of the top three civs military wise, building wonders in the late game is asking for trouble, cos wonders in the late game require a lot of investment and all the teams with strong military will be looking for targets from whom to acquire the said wonders.

In my game yesterday I invaded Africa because on the main screen it showed them having 1 wonder and a lot more techs than me.

After I invaded them and won, I got nothing!

I wondered if maybe the screen showing what Civs have is not displaying properly or if it's displaying old info and maybe that's why Egypt keep attacking you Glinda, because they think you have something they want!

yeah the world screen has gone wonky. (at least in our game) i dont know what information is accurate anymore.

Actually the african guys were getting dog piled cos of that, i think i saw at least three civs beat them yesterday including you

Panda_Power said:

In my game yesterday I invaded Africa because on the main screen it showed them having 1 wonder and a lot more techs than me.

After I invaded them and won, I got nothing!

I wondered if maybe the screen showing what Civs have is not displaying properly or if it's displaying old info and maybe that's why Egypt keep attacking you Glinda, because they think you have something they want!

Click to expand...

Well, they attacked us once before and didn't get anything, so you would think they would figure it out.

PS - if you dont mind me asking which one of the guys from Arabia are you?

I'm MarkA.

Yeah, I thought it was too good to be true....they had no army and I thought it would give us a little boost, but nothing.

Kinda lookin forward to that game being over now and starting afresh!

Hey, had a quick look at your city. your scientist set up isnt very efficient. the output is pretty poor for late game.

Have a look at Either Devin's or my city, thats prolly the best setup for the scientists.

Cheers, I'll take a look. I've been struggling with optimal setups for citizens...even with reading all the guides out there!