A strange issue with Indonesia

So, I've completed games as Pedro and Casimir (as well as new France) and took my eyes on Indonesian Culture victory with Order.

But I've came across a rather strange "issue". I play on Warlord, which isn't that difficult to play, I've set my sights on I believe Small Continents and choose the other 11 players (Ashurbanipal, Maria I, Wu Zetian, Dido, Kamehameha, Sejong, Pacal, Montezuma, Harun al-Rashid, Gustav Adolphus and Isabella).

While the game is quite fun, I get my Culture going, I expand slowly, not too aggresively, I get Library, Pyramids and Parthenon on time, I end up with Macchu Picchu, but at that stage I notice I begin to quickly fall behind in techs (albeit, it could be because I either end up knowing only Kammy, or nobody), and quite frankly the gap becomes bigger, despite me growing big and having libraries and unis.. what would be the reaosn, I did notice that my city don't grow as fast, despite having pletny of farms and granaries built (Caravans don't seem to do that much difference, but I also had like 1 because one city stopped growing) I have this thing of building Wonders with a Production Focused city (then switching it back to Default).

So.. why fallnig behind? I use similiar strategies with other players on other maps and I have no issues, quite frankly I proper into the runaway position.

For every player you have met and if he already posses the tech you are researching, tech costs go down by a whopping 5%. Considering every AI has met each other, they have a fcking huge discount in researching slighlty older techs. Also number of citizens is very important, it is 1 beaker per citizen iirc. Did you staff you specialist slots with scientist? Only building Unis is not enough. If you are this far behind in tech, sending caravans to other players cities will grant you additional science. Also in cultural games it is normal to be slightly behind in tech as you focus on culture SP instead of science SP (rationalism, which gives HUGE boosts to science)

dopingman said:

For every player you have met and if he already posses the tech you are researching, tech costs go down by a whopping 5%. Considering every AI has met each other, they have a fcking huge discount in researching slighlty older techs. Also number of citizens is very important, it is 1 beaker per citizen iirc. Did you staff you specialist slots with scientist? Only building Unis is not enough. If you are this far behind in tech, sending caravans to other players cities will grant you additional science. Also in cultural games it is normal to be slightly behind in tech as you focus on culture SP instead of science SP (rationalism, which gives HUGE boosts to science)

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I haven't reached Renaissance Era, but I guess it's the issue of not meeting other players. That would make much sense. I don't fill specialist slots manually, I let the comptuer do it (again, I play on Warlord, those thing dno't matter that big).

Computer is terribad at assigning specialists. Even on warlord I'd manage them myself. It ain't so much work, just fill both sci slots if your city is larger then 6-8 ppl (so you don't halt growth). Assigning citizens to other specialist slots apart from science is not good anyway (there are exceptions).

Small continents and isolated starts are my favourite kind of map and having recently decided to branch out into Pangaea and Continents one thing that I've come to realize is just how many fewer tiles each city-spot had on small continent maps if you settled anywhere near the coast. In that regard, food from the terrain is almost always, comparatively, a problem. Given that food leads directly to population which leads immediately on to science dedicated one (or even two) trade routes to shipping food to your NC city is usually a good bet. These should be sea trade routes too, caravans are a waste on small continents maps given that you will almost always have a sea route option and cargo ships cart double (be it gold, production or food).

Also, if a bunch of AIs are on one continent then there are good odds that they have some decent inland cities, which will almost certainly be of a higher pop which in turn mean more science output (assuming parity in other areas).

Yeah, do the specialist allocations manually. You'll get more GSs and less GMs - a very good deal.

Also, don't be afraid to use the artist slots. They don't decrease GS and GE spawn rate.

I've rarely gotten plenty of GMs if I didn't specifically focus on gold (quite frankly on Warlord once you get your routes going you get plenty of cash). Quite frankly I think the AI does a good job with my specialist slots, once the city grows big enough it begins to assign these slots automatically (so I had plenty of Artists, Writers, Musicians), and even Engineers and Scientists, rarely did I get Merchants actually.