Crossroads of the World

Tandur said:

Ok, I think that makes sense. Simply put I just gotta hook my guild up to the minor guilds, correct? Not the Major guilds. And that's only if the minor guild is currently producing one of the 5 key resources.

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That's correct. I started a new game this morning (it's a lot more fun when after you make the connection with how the guilds work, I've found) so I can tell you that each of the goods required by one of the major guilds is made by at least one of the minor guilds from things all over the board.

So if you hook up to a minor guild, you'll be fine. If you see a city that has a major guild, then you should be able to expand there at the other guild's expense, unless it's the headquarters. (I'm pretty sure of that last part.)

Wow, could they have NOT explained that any better in the Civilopedia for this MOD?

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Yeah, I wondered that too.

So far, I've been fairly disappointed with the vast majority of the extra mods and scenarios that were included with BtS, and even Warlords. Some are great, of course, but most seem like they were included more as a template to give us, the fans, ideas on how to use the new game mechanics to create interesting mods. Crossroads, obviously, focuses on the new Corporations.

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It's for that reason that I was put off of corporations in the main game - I wasn't aware that they weren't as complicated as they were in this game. (They're not, really - it's just a matter of making the leap in getting the needed resources, which is convoluted but not complicated.) Once I got the hang of it, though, I fell in love with them. Of course, YMMV.

Jason T said:

It's for that reason that I was put off of corporations in the main game - I wasn't aware that they weren't as complicated as they were in this game. (They're not, really - it's just a matter of making the leap in getting the needed resources, which is convoluted but not complicated.) Once I got the hang of it, though, I fell in love with them. Of course, YMMV.

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Well, MyCynical did a little strategy/FAQ focusing on Corporations, and more specifically, Sid's Sushi Co. Based on his analysis and actual play using the Corporations, I'd say that SSC is way overpowered compared to other corporations.

Tandur said:

Well, MyCynical did a little strategy/FAQ focusing on Corporations, and more specifically, Sid's Sushi Co. Based on his analysis and actual play using the Corporations, I'd say that SSC is way overpowered compared to other corporations.

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Without having read the analysis, the conclusion doesn't surprise me. I actually don't know what I like about it the most, but it could be the fact that it's one of the corporations that dovetails nicely in the four-corp set.

It also helps that I enjoy being a culture warrior...

Jason T said:

This one took me a long time to figure out, and I could still be remembering this wrong. However, if you study the map, you'll notice that there are guilds on the map other than the ones controlled by the majors. Those guilds turn the map resources into the ones that your guild needs to spread. So the real object is to hook your trade guilds up with the ones that make your resources.

EDIT:

As an example, the Fishmongers of Cyprus consumes Wine, Spice, Ivory, and Dye. They produce Clams. Move your guild into a city that already houses the Fishmongers of Cyprus, obtain those resources, and the Clams come rolling in - literally and figuratively

The Guilds that produce what you need all correspond to the non-Major civilizations. This is clearly an encouragement towards aggression - capture those cities, begin spreading their guilds, and then hook yours up with theirs.

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I usually don't capture the minor civilizations in my strategy, but the one game that I did, I was unable to spread their non-major guilds. After the city disorder goes away, I didn't have the option of building the unit to spread their guild. So how can you spread non-major guilds? if you can't then there is only a maximum of 5 cities that you can spread your guild to. With only a max of 5 cities available for major guilds, it is very hard to get a early or mid-game commerce victory.

I've noticed that the AI masses up gold early in the game only to start quickly falling behind me in gold per turn once I get my guild going. (On lower levels I can catch up, but not on higher levels.) I've noticed that even after the first 10 turns they have gained thousands of gold - even with only 10% devoted to wealth - each while I've stayed static. They'll have 3500 when I have 1000 after recovering from establishing my guilds, and 5000 to 6000 when I'm around 2500. I'll be gaining much more gold per turn from 2-3 corps and the courthouse/bank/market/grocer.

Anyway, I've done some snooping using artificially inserted great spies and world builder to figure out what the majors are doing to get the early gold boost and didn't figure out anything. They're not pillaging the minors for gold (which wouldn't explain their early game leap in gold anyway - even scrubbing the towns on Cyprus only would give around 400 gold total), they're not capturing each others caravans and they're not capturing minor cities. Most of them are only running 10% gold (with some doing 90/10 research/spy and most doing 60/40). The only thing they do that accounts for some of the difference is that they pursue great leaders early in the game while I wait until about 30 turns. But since they settle them for the long-term benefit rather than use the great merchant to get instant cash, it still doesn't account for where they get the early cash from. And even though most of them have high spy spending, the game doesn't allow anyone to steal treasury or do anything else with the spies that generate income. What am I missing?

Well, I can't really say why they have so much money. I just remember taking a lot from them through conquest.

Does anyone else have an idea? Are they just benefiting from an AI-only handicap, or is there something else?

The AI gets a free gold bonus every turn or so according to the python.


Since the bonus is a set amount and doesn't seem to scale, it would appear like the AI is making lots of gold early game initially, and then seem to make less comparatively as you start setting up means to make more and more gold yourself.

Also, in answer to an earlier question, once you get 75% of the victory gold amount the game makes a random AI declare war on you every 5 turns or so.

So it would appear the AI gets a generous handicap. Figures the AI wouldn't actually be capable of using the built-in game systems the player has to use to reach the target.

I won the game with constant warring. I ended up with like hundreds of th eMamluke UU and like 50 Trebuchets.

I used the UU to cut the city off, move in the Guillera Muskets on the path to stop them and then sacraficed the Trebuchets.

The Highlight is the seige of a Timurid City. I almost took it, but on the off turn they got enough reinforcements to push me all the way back to by second line of defence. I retreated, consolated and attacked another city instead of the heavily garrisoned one, retreated as the field army arrived and took the original city.

Warfare is definitely the way to go. I think I played the Mamelukes as well, but that was awhile ago.

Thanks tsentom1. I haven't played with the python, so didn't know exactly how much extra gold the AI was getting or whether it scaled during the game.

It does seem fair since the AI is pretty lax about setting up their corporation. I've pretty much only noticed the Timurids putting their corporation in the closest city. And every once in a while the AI will put the corporation into a captured small CIV city, although they usually just leave my corporation alone.

I dabble with the scenario last night. A have 2 questions:

1. At the top left of the screen, the gold per turn is like MINUS 1153546?? What is this about? When I try and click on F2, I can't open the finance adviser. Any ideas?

2. Also, researching. I don't really get this. The slider is always at 0%. All the commerce in going to my treasury, which I understand. Why am I not generating research? When I move the slider to 100%, the numbers of turns to research a tech goes down, but when I change turns, the slider goes back down to 0%.

Apart from this, it looks pretty cool.

thelebk said:

2) How do you get spies to "steal treasury" in this game? I move a spy to an enemy city, have enough espoionage points to run the mission, attempt it and it gives a drop down menu after selecting steal treasury (city target maybe?) where the only option is "nothing". I had spies in every opponent, and not one of them was able to get the steal treasury command to work.

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I have the same problem. It has got to be a mistake because the in-game tips (lame as they are) specifically suggest using this strategy. Maybe it was disabled late in development? Can anyone confirm that it is disabled?

I almost won,then the AI's sent HUGE Armies and I almost died.

topsecret said:

I almost won,then the AI's sent HUGE Armies and I almost died.

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Yes, that's the way the game works. When you get to 20,000 -22,500 gold, they are going to start declaring war on you once every 5 turns. The end of the game gets to be constant war. That's one advantage of pursuing conquest instead of spreading the guilds to other civs. One possible cheat would be to be at about 20,000 gold, keep it there, and take another enemy guild headquarters. With a fast 30,000, they don't have time to wreck you.

I learned from an above poster that the AI, more or less, gets a set amount of gold every turn, so when it gets to 20,000, it still has a ways to go. The human player will be behind early, but gathers gold much faster in the late game.

Ataxerxes said:

Yes, that's the way the game works. When you get to 20,000 -22,500 gold, they are going to start declaring war on you once every 5 turns. The end of the game gets to be constant war. That's one advantage of pursuing conquest instead of spreading the guilds to other civs. One possible cheat would be to be at about 20,000 gold, keep it there, and take another enemy guild headquarters. With a fast 30,000, they don't have time to wreck you.

I learned from an above poster that the AI, more or less, gets a set amount of gold every turn, so when it gets to 20,000, it still has a ways to go. The human player will be behind early, but gathers gold much faster in the late game.

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I won! Built a huge army then boom! Got enemy GHQ and had a huge army!