stormtrooper412
Peacemongering Turtlesaur
I am quite happy I managed to make Jesuit Education work in TSG122. Not the fastest finish but I'm always glad to see a sub 250. I think Egypt are one of the few that can make it work
Liberty Wide Game Guide (Acken's version)
- Thread starter Acken
- Start date
Well, I'm not saying that Aqueducts aren't good/worth building. It's just that other stuff is good too -- I really want to get my GS points ticking ASAP, and I also want to get to Renaissance ASAP for Rationalism. I guess it's more that I don't like taking the time to get Engineering. If the tech wasn't off the Education beeline, I would build Aqueducts earlier. But only in some cities, so it's hard to say how valuable the tech is.
In terms of what my empire management actually looks like: in the early-mid game, happiness is usually a big constraint. Max growth in every city isn't an option, so I need to pick and choose where I grow. My general approach is to try to grow each of my cities to the size where they can work all their resource tiles, maybe an extra Mine, and no more. For some cities this will only be about pop 5 or 6, especially early on when borders haven't fully expanded. The National College city will grow more, since it usually has more good tiles and needs to build wonders -- this city likely works all +food tiles. In this scenario, Aqueducts would be good in some cities but useless in others.
So I have these small cities, some of which are stagnating as I hit Education. Since they aren't growing, they must be working non-food tiles, which generally means I have a lot of hammers relative to pop at this stage of the game. These cities are thus capable of getting their Universities up in reasonable time, despite being small. Once Universities are up, I have specialist slots, which means each city effectively has two more "good" tiles that I actively want to work. At this point I shift a bit more to food and cities start growing again, and Aqueducts become more useful. But happiness-constrained Aqueducts aren't necessarily better than Workshops, and I have other techs I want to get, so I'll sometimes do things like University --> Observatory --> Workshop --> Aqueduct. This is generally the order that would cause me to end up with some cities not getting Aqueducts until late Renaissance.
Guilds I don't worry too much about. The NC city should have enough natural growth to handle the Writer's Guild easily. Artist's Guild I often delay, since I generally don't want to burn Artists until after Universal Suffrage anyway, and it's not too hard to have enough for continuous Golden Age from there until the game ends.
I also assign Caravans almost strictly based on which city has the least food -- it seems like the marginal boost is more meaningful there, given rising food costs per growth. So my trade routes let me support these small cities that wouldn't be able to grow + work specialists + have hammers if they didn't have help.
BroOfTheSun
Warlord
Acken's guide is pretty much how I play CiV. Just some more tips to add to this:
* I put each guild in different cities, so that they can still continue to grow. I usually end up sending food trade routes to these cities to help them grow a little. Don't put any guilds in the NC city, as you don't want to stagger their growth (more pop = more science).
* Having at least one good production city is important early on, to build an army to stop invasions.
* Delay aqueducts until you know you'll have the happiness to support the growth. I usually build aqueducts when I get close to getting an ideology boost, and the ideology tenants can support the pop growth. You don't need high pop cities early on, since the city % increase in science is less a penalty early on when techs cost less than later game techs.
* Gold is a major issue early game, and can kill your Liberty game starts. One of Liberty's downfalls is that it doesn't give an policies that increase gold revenue. You need gold producing tiles to make up for this. Because of this issue, I avoid any 2 gold maint buildings such as watermills, and rush markets (sometimes even before getting a library up). When building roads to connect cities, you want to get the connection done ASAP so to avoid as much gold loss as possible.
* Placing that 5th city down will cause your neighbors to not like you.
* I don't really agree with getting Pyramids before settling cities, as it delays the city settlement for too long, and AI civs may pick up those good spots.
* Improve the unique luxes ASAP
* Build walls in outer cities. They don't cost any gold maint, and will save you from invasions. It also gives your cities something to produce while waiting for markets.
* I put each guild in different cities, so that they can still continue to grow. I usually end up sending food trade routes to these cities to help them grow a little. Don't put any guilds in the NC city, as you don't want to stagger their growth (more pop = more science).
* Having at least one good production city is important early on, to build an army to stop invasions.
* Delay aqueducts until you know you'll have the happiness to support the growth. I usually build aqueducts when I get close to getting an ideology boost, and the ideology tenants can support the pop growth. You don't need high pop cities early on, since the city % increase in science is less a penalty early on when techs cost less than later game techs.
* Gold is a major issue early game, and can kill your Liberty game starts. One of Liberty's downfalls is that it doesn't give an policies that increase gold revenue. You need gold producing tiles to make up for this. Because of this issue, I avoid any 2 gold maint buildings such as watermills, and rush markets (sometimes even before getting a library up). When building roads to connect cities, you want to get the connection done ASAP so to avoid as much gold loss as possible.
* Placing that 5th city down will cause your neighbors to not like you.
* I don't really agree with getting Pyramids before settling cities, as it delays the city settlement for too long, and AI civs may pick up those good spots.
* Improve the unique luxes ASAP
* Build walls in outer cities. They don't cost any gold maint, and will save you from invasions. It also gives your cities something to produce while waiting for markets.
Thanks for the answers Acken. I tried out the guide and was fairly impressed by reaching education around T115 with 6 city france - however as you mentioned there were some pitfalls later on:
- Religion Issues: Its not every game that you can snag a good religion with pagodas. I know you reccommend religious civs but the panthenons went really early in this game as did my chances of desert folkore. Life without good faith gen + pagodas means a lot less happy, culture (border expand) - I dont suppose theres anyway to mitigate this?
- Map Issues: I lacked horses and cattle since most of the terrain near me was desert. The inability to build circuses really hurt for secondary cities and in this BO it seems there is no way to adapt for petra capital?
- Money Issues: As you mentioned my gc started dying in the rein. I tried to mitigate with markets/banks but since i was going for culture victory my production queue was kinda full. I wasnt too sure what should take priority. For a science game it doesnt matter too much since you will want markets/banks anyway but Im not sure for culture?
- Follow On Victory:
For CV it seems that every additional city needs 3 more arch (average 1 landmark per city and 2 for the museum). But as opposed to SV, sites are limited. I ran out of sites to get since I reached arch a bit late (T175~) and all the AI seemed to tech competently as well. It wasnt a big deal since only 1 slot wasnt filled but it seems a bit harder than 4 city trad. Also the Capital was not very big so hard building ET/SOL was very painful.
For SV i think the more cites you have the better it is due to massive late game bulbs. The only issues I have are: buying labs in all cities, and building hubble in a decent time. Do you reccommend routing all food routes back to the capital after the secondary cities reach about 15 pop so that it can grow/work the mines? This excludes one city which is designated to do apollo/PT/Oxford. 1 last bug bear is not being able to spend 1000 faith to GE the SOL...
As for the game itself i finally hacked through 65k culture on T280 but thats more due to my sloppy incompetence post education rather than the style.
- Religion Issues: Its not every game that you can snag a good religion with pagodas. I know you reccommend religious civs but the panthenons went really early in this game as did my chances of desert folkore. Life without good faith gen + pagodas means a lot less happy, culture (border expand) - I dont suppose theres anyway to mitigate this?
- Map Issues: I lacked horses and cattle since most of the terrain near me was desert. The inability to build circuses really hurt for secondary cities and in this BO it seems there is no way to adapt for petra capital?
- Money Issues: As you mentioned my gc started dying in the rein. I tried to mitigate with markets/banks but since i was going for culture victory my production queue was kinda full. I wasnt too sure what should take priority. For a science game it doesnt matter too much since you will want markets/banks anyway but Im not sure for culture?
- Follow On Victory:
For CV it seems that every additional city needs 3 more arch (average 1 landmark per city and 2 for the museum). But as opposed to SV, sites are limited. I ran out of sites to get since I reached arch a bit late (T175~) and all the AI seemed to tech competently as well. It wasnt a big deal since only 1 slot wasnt filled but it seems a bit harder than 4 city trad. Also the Capital was not very big so hard building ET/SOL was very painful.
For SV i think the more cites you have the better it is due to massive late game bulbs. The only issues I have are: buying labs in all cities, and building hubble in a decent time. Do you reccommend routing all food routes back to the capital after the secondary cities reach about 15 pop so that it can grow/work the mines? This excludes one city which is designated to do apollo/PT/Oxford. 1 last bug bear is not being able to spend 1000 faith to GE the SOL...
As for the game itself i finally hacked through 65k culture on T280 but thats more due to my sloppy incompetence post education rather than the style.
Acken
Deity
Not really but basically no religion happiness mostly mean you'll have to make more Coliseums earlier and slow down on growth. The strategy shouldn't *require* religion but not having a good one will slow you down. Don't forget though that there are alternatives to Pagodas.
Religious center (2 happy for temple) is as good and mosques will still be a good option or cathedrals for a culture game.
If you play deity I'd switch to a beeline currency instead of engineering and rush Petra if that is what you need. But perhaps Petra starts are more suited to tradition to begin with. Can't have it all
Work the luxury tiles and sell as much as possible. You can also use some of your routes for gold. Finally you can also chose to make a MachuPichu detour by getting guilds after currency instead of after education.
A lot of your income can also come from religion so not having one will hurt further.
The good news is that you don't need more archaeologist to beat the AI. The fact that you have more slots is a boon, not a problem. Something I like to do when attempting a CV:
Go for Economics before architecture then bulb industrialization then go tech chemistry while mining the coal (or improving it in a CS) and scientific theory next then go archaeologists.
The combination of factories and chemistry will allow you to pass the production need required when needing Schools + Museums + archaeologists. 3 factories will give you your ideology. factories will also help you build late game wonders.
The plan kinda fall appart if there is no coal anywhere though
So do it if you have big lands and a few CS allies.I also try to build forges earlier since it boosts archaeo production.
For a SV, or even a CV honestly, you can start making trade posts not long after getting civil society. With the combination of market and banks you can start to get a ton of money for labs. If you wish to buy them though you'lll probably need BigBen+Mercantilism. And even then you probably won't be able to buy 7 at once. Just build the labs in your best cities and buy elsewhere, if like I suggest you managed to get coal and chemistry you should have enough production.
Post size 15 (20 in the capital) the growth is not that important so just work your mines and get whatever you need. The bulk of your science with this strategy comes from specialists rather than pop !!! The pop requirement is there only to make sure you can work the slots.
My cities usually finish at size 18 or so with a size 23 capital.
Let's say tradition has cities size 40 30 25 25 (total 120) while you have 23 20 18 18 17 17 17 (total 130) you have slightly more pop but tradition has a better science concentration in the capital (with the NC) and you have to deal with an additional 15% tech cost. On the other hand you have 12 more scientist slots and 15ish more slots. Considering 1 pop is 2 science this is worth: 12*5/2 + 15*2/2 = 45 more pop !! And there is the raw science of schools and labs pushing this further.
For the capital I still usually double feed it for most of the game with caravans to help because it has to spend a lot of time building wonders and extras.
This is a very good guide. I think Liberty to Collective rule would be my default opener if I didn't play for fast finish times, as it feels viable in pretty much every situation except OCC. There's always the Trad/Lib mix if you have few expansion spots and CB rushing someone isn't an option either, or you could just stay on 3-4 cities and finish Liberty for a Machinery rush or whatever.
Wide empires always catch up to tall ones, being competitive is just a matter of catching up before the game actually ends. I think that doesn't always happen on Deity due to abundance of gold, RAs, trade routes and reduced tech costs allowing a tall game to get a head start with rush-bought universities. The Industrial -> Info era jump is so quick (unfortunately) that it's not guaranteed a wide game will catch up in time. On lower difficulties it's definitely a good idea to expand a lot though, the only question is when. Is it 3-4 city NC with more expos later or 7-9 cities right off the bat? You can afford to delay since the land is unlikely to be taken by the slow AIs. I'm not sure what the better play is.
An interesting case is Austria on Deity. Acken has outlined the value of an average-sized city in the late game above, and Austria can get almost fully developed cities for a relatively low price at any point of the game, not to mention the extra military units.
Wide empires always catch up to tall ones, being competitive is just a matter of catching up before the game actually ends. I think that doesn't always happen on Deity due to abundance of gold, RAs, trade routes and reduced tech costs allowing a tall game to get a head start with rush-bought universities. The Industrial -> Info era jump is so quick (unfortunately) that it's not guaranteed a wide game will catch up in time. On lower difficulties it's definitely a good idea to expand a lot though, the only question is when. Is it 3-4 city NC with more expos later or 7-9 cities right off the bat? You can afford to delay since the land is unlikely to be taken by the slow AIs. I'm not sure what the better play is.
An interesting case is Austria on Deity. Acken has outlined the value of an average-sized city in the late game above, and Austria can get almost fully developed cities for a relatively low price at any point of the game, not to mention the extra military units.
Acken
Deity
My reasoning is that faster cities simply get more turns of production and don't require the use of catch up mechanics (routes and rushs) as much as post NC cities. This somewhat forces me to get the NC with the engineer though so I lose an early academy or a wonder by comparison.
Acken
Deity
Someone had fun using this strategy to do a fast science victory with Spain on an incredible map on reddit.
You can find the thread here (with the map (requires all DLC)):
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/3ugew0/i_have_finally_done_it_turn_199_science_victory/
and I got a T185 science victory on the map with 8 cities liberty using more or less my guide (2 free settlers thanks to wonders).
You can find the thread here (with the map (requires all DLC)):
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/3ugew0/i_have_finally_done_it_turn_199_science_victory/
and I got a T185 science victory on the map with 8 cities liberty using more or less my guide (2 free settlers thanks to wonders).
Spoiler :
stormtrooper412
Peacemongering Turtlesaur
Thanks for sharing, an incredible map indeed 
edit: only finished on T213, probably due to the fact I was a bit late getting ST at 150 and Plastics on T180. Had to drag out the ending as well because I didn't have the money for the last part
edit: only finished on T213, probably due to the fact I was a bit late getting ST at 150 and Plastics on T180. Had to drag out the ending as well because I didn't have the money for the last part
stormtrooper412
Peacemongering Turtlesaur
btw how did you get to ST on turn 130, did you bulb a few?
Acken
Deity
No I only bulbed industrialization and plastics but bulbing indu also gave me architecture.
Hi Acken.
I have a challenge for you - if you haven't done this already
Can you make this strategy work on this map here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=535369
What I'd specifically like to see is someone demonstrate settling 6 cities by turn 80 and sending a legion/ballista rush against India.
Is that even possible on Liberty Diety with the poor quality dirt on that map? I'm interested to hear what people have to say about this.
I have a challenge for you - if you haven't done this already
Can you make this strategy work on this map here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=535369
What I'd specifically like to see is someone demonstrate settling 6 cities by turn 80 and sending a legion/ballista rush against India.
Is that even possible on Liberty Diety with the poor quality dirt on that map? I'm interested to hear what people have to say about this.
stormtrooper412
Peacemongering Turtlesaur
IIRC
Spoiler :
I am going to have to try out the aqueducts before university route. Like Manpezee I always went Education first and then back tracked down to Engineering. In my mind though getting the University up quicker and the faster tech rate from there should outweigh the growth bonus.
Some of it will be map dependent with number of jungle tiles and happiness tiles.
Some of it will be map dependent with number of jungle tiles and happiness tiles.
Acken
Deity
Those two objectives are not really compatible. The guide clearly states this is mostly peaceful and lock you down on 100turns of eco.
I wondered about this. It's disappointing because it means you can never really achieve what the Roman Empire did by 100AD which is about turn 110-120?
So the only real option then would be to settle 3-4 expo's, get iron, rush Gandhi and then fill in the remaining city spots. Then the trouble is your later expo's will be so far behind it will make them a real drain on your economy - even with Rome's +25% building advantage
Why isnt Rome more of a classic Liberty 3 city CB rush, with timing the UUs to get you the remaining majority of the map?
I think IRL Rome rolled a salt start, not tundra!
