jkk
Warlord
Am definitely giving some thought to that. Weird outcome, but part of the fun of the game is responding to weird situations.
This is embarrassing.
- Thread starter jkk
- Start date
Am definitely giving some thought to that. Weird outcome, but part of the fun of the game is responding to weird situations.
splunge the 2nd
King
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2007
- Messages
- 741
In terms of happiness, I rarely build happiness buildings.
The market/luxury happiness is the most cost effective followed by the happiness tax slider.
Rather than entertainers, I will use scientists to avoid unrest- unhappiness is heavily based on non-specialist population, so switching a population point to an entertainer loses production and gains happiness, but for a borderline unhappy town, switching to a scientist may avoid unrest and net me 3 research gold (albeit still losing the production of a square).
By the way, JKK, do you automate cities and workers? I'd avoid that!
The market/luxury happiness is the most cost effective followed by the happiness tax slider.
Rather than entertainers, I will use scientists to avoid unrest- unhappiness is heavily based on non-specialist population, so switching a population point to an entertainer loses production and gains happiness, but for a borderline unhappy town, switching to a scientist may avoid unrest and net me 3 research gold (albeit still losing the production of a square).
By the way, JKK, do you automate cities and workers? I'd avoid that!
Military police is the most cost effective method while still with the unit support limit. But as a republic it does not apply.
Well, you also need to count the shields, that building this "unnecessary" military had cost. (Though it has to be admitted, that it provides a degree of protection for unexpected cases of emergency... But still I prefer the happiness from marketplaces with the added bonus of increased tax income once the research phase is over.)
Warriors are not that expensive. It really is free unit supports that counts there.
One of the things i always like to keep in mind is that railroads, factories and power plants increase production by a factor of more than 3. In the industrial age shield are less scarce than commerce. Ideally that is being considered long before the industrial age. That implies to get to 4 turns per tech ASAP and to stockpile gold for the industrial age. It may of course not always be suitable, but i learned to like this commerce oriented approach to the game.
robbus
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2005
- Messages
- 208
I would add that try to anticipate the next most productive square to be worked after a population increase. So often I have played catch up with worker improvements, meaning I am working unimproved tiles after pop increase. This trains you to assess terrain, which is a key to success.
civ2 assist is extremely helpful to keep track of things. To get better at higher difficulties you need more micromanagement of cities.
btw I am at emperor level or below!
albatros13
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2015
- Messages
- 37
You wanted help, but i don't see your savegame. Really, all those tips and tricks what others posted are nice to know, but they may miss some big problems you maybe don't even know those may pose a problem. Of course, every person plays differently for their own playstyle and they are assuming that's what you also want to know, but actually it's better to analyze your current play(and your goal in mind).
So, send at least one savegame at 100th turn or something and people can analyze the situation. Every person should point out 3-4 problems you are having and you should mainly get serious only when two or more people would say the same thing. Of course, tell what is your goal in this game(it doesn't need to be even a specific victory).
In ideal situation, 3 games would be good to analyze - at 50th, 75th and 100th turn. Or 50th, 100th and 150th.
And finally, i won't go to speculation land where i'm assuming too many factors and that's why i won't give any tips either. For example, you may not want to micromanage and don't want to waste so much time on every turn(maybe you want just fun), but i do. I check on every city and think many times over what i can micromanage and what do i want to get done in this city. My city radiuses also collide so that sometimes i switch working tiles almost every turn.
So, send at least one savegame at 100th turn or something and people can analyze the situation. Every person should point out 3-4 problems you are having and you should mainly get serious only when two or more people would say the same thing. Of course, tell what is your goal in this game(it doesn't need to be even a specific victory).
In ideal situation, 3 games would be good to analyze - at 50th, 75th and 100th turn. Or 50th, 100th and 150th.
And finally, i won't go to speculation land where i'm assuming too many factors and that's why i won't give any tips either. For example, you may not want to micromanage and don't want to waste so much time on every turn(maybe you want just fun), but i do. I check on every city and think many times over what i can micromanage and what do i want to get done in this city. My city radiuses also collide so that sometimes i switch working tiles almost every turn.
Savegames are really helpful to analyze what you did. Without a savegame there is a great deal of uncertainty about what you actually did and thus chances are that you may be hinted into the wrong direction.
Turn 100 seems like a very good point in time. That is far enough after switching to republic but still not too far away. This is when there is certain dynamic, when the way you play the game is somewhat crucial. In a savegame many turns before that one has to speculate what will happen later. In a savegame many turns after 550 BC one would have speculate what happened earlier.
Turn 100 seems like a very good point in time. That is far enough after switching to republic but still not too far away. This is when there is certain dynamic, when the way you play the game is somewhat crucial. In a savegame many turns before that one has to speculate what will happen later. In a savegame many turns after 550 BC one would have speculate what happened earlier.
jkk
Warlord
I definitely don't automate them. I am the imperial/bureaucratic busybody ruler constantly meddling in my cities' affairs, acting as if I know better than them.
jkk
Warlord
I'll have to look and see what turn I'm on. I suspect that my current game is well past 100 turns (circa 1100 CE). Had a hiatus while I dealt with an influx of editing work, then some house guests and a trip into the desert, but I think things will calm down this week.
albatros13
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2015
- Messages
- 37
Do you have previous savegames? 1100ad is a little bit far away. The point is that you can afford more mistakes in later eras, if you are better at previous eras. That means you need to correct maybe 1 mistake in ancient era instead of correcting 3-4 mistakes in industrial era. It's easier for us and for you too.
jkk
Warlord
Okay, let me see what I can do here. Please bear with me if I make mistakes, as attachments are not my forte.
I had a short look at the turn 95 - 650 BC savegame.
Your research seems rather slow for this era. Given your huge gold stockpile you should increase it from 50% to 100%. But even than it is slow. Part of this is due to huge map, therefore i will later in this post advise against research.
For my taste you have too much military. 18 military units on 10 towns is too much, half of that would suffice. Disbanding some military seems indicated. Better would have been to build less military, especially less expensive military. Warriors suffice for military police. Spearmen and even horsemen are too expensive early on.
You also have too many city improvements. Most towns have granaries. That may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. It depends on what you have sacrificied to get them. Also you have a barrack and a temple. Also you are building 2 wonders, some improvements and a great deal of military. All that is essentially waste.
Your towns are too big. Most of them are size 3, one is size 4, albeit you only have 1 luxury. You need to transform your population into workers and before that into settlers. There is place for 20 towns or more, use it. Found were food is plenty, those floodplains look tasty, especially those with wheat. Once the land that can be taken peacefully is taken you need to build workers because cities start to grow. If you had founded 20 towns you would need 40 to 60 workers. Being agricultural but not being industrious means that you grow fast, but your workers may have a hard time keeping up the pace. They do need to keep up the pace.
This is a huge map. At regent you can have about 57 cities with acceptable corruption during te middle ages. Keep this in mind during the settling phase. I usually donnot play on huge maps, but this changes a lot. I expect the settling phase to be finished during despotism, but here the setting phase takes lot longer. Practically speaking it would be best to set research to zero once you are a republic and spend money on settlers. While land can be taken peacefully it should be taken peacefully. This saves a lot of trouble. Once the settling phase starts to end you should start building military to deter grudgers. This can happen while cities need to grow so they can build workers.
When entering the republic some tiles should have been irrigated, partly during anarchy and despotism. Ideally the food surplus of towns should not be below 5.
It strikes that albeit the mentioned flaws you are leading the demography(F11). I advise you to start your next game on emperor. AI will still be weak enough. The most notable difference may be that your second citizen will start unhappy and thus needs a luxury or similar. Also research costs are 25% higher.
Your research seems rather slow for this era. Given your huge gold stockpile you should increase it from 50% to 100%. But even than it is slow. Part of this is due to huge map, therefore i will later in this post advise against research.
For my taste you have too much military. 18 military units on 10 towns is too much, half of that would suffice. Disbanding some military seems indicated. Better would have been to build less military, especially less expensive military. Warriors suffice for military police. Spearmen and even horsemen are too expensive early on.
You also have too many city improvements. Most towns have granaries. That may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. It depends on what you have sacrificied to get them. Also you have a barrack and a temple. Also you are building 2 wonders, some improvements and a great deal of military. All that is essentially waste.
Your towns are too big. Most of them are size 3, one is size 4, albeit you only have 1 luxury. You need to transform your population into workers and before that into settlers. There is place for 20 towns or more, use it. Found were food is plenty, those floodplains look tasty, especially those with wheat. Once the land that can be taken peacefully is taken you need to build workers because cities start to grow. If you had founded 20 towns you would need 40 to 60 workers. Being agricultural but not being industrious means that you grow fast, but your workers may have a hard time keeping up the pace. They do need to keep up the pace.
This is a huge map. At regent you can have about 57 cities with acceptable corruption during te middle ages. Keep this in mind during the settling phase. I usually donnot play on huge maps, but this changes a lot. I expect the settling phase to be finished during despotism, but here the setting phase takes lot longer. Practically speaking it would be best to set research to zero once you are a republic and spend money on settlers. While land can be taken peacefully it should be taken peacefully. This saves a lot of trouble. Once the settling phase starts to end you should start building military to deter grudgers. This can happen while cities need to grow so they can build workers.
When entering the republic some tiles should have been irrigated, partly during anarchy and despotism. Ideally the food surplus of towns should not be below 5.
It strikes that albeit the mentioned flaws you are leading the demography(F11). I advise you to start your next game on emperor. AI will still be weak enough. The most notable difference may be that your second citizen will start unhappy and thus needs a luxury or similar. Also research costs are 25% higher.
jkk
Warlord
Thanks for the review, justanick.
It's never occurred to me that I should ever leave any city ungarrisoned, which would result if one had only 9 military on 10 towns; wouldn't they see my weakness and jump on me rapidly? Is there a grace period where I can be almost positive the AI won't attack me 'just because?'
I am pretty sure that was a save where the AI was proposing wonders I didn't plan to stay on, so at least you can have faith that I changed those when I brought the game up again.
650 must be just about when I had recently got Republic.
So at this point one of the main flaws is that instead of settlers and then workers, I'm building other stuff? I had reckoned workers also would count toward the Republic's military limit but maybe they don't.
I was concerned about the floodplain cities that they'd have megatons of food, but not enough shields to build settlers fast enough to take the pressure off.
So you are saying that I'm coming out okay enough to move up a level in difficulty in spite of my systemic missteps? (That could sound like I were pouting, but I'm not, just summarizing as I see it and absorbing it.) In that scenario, I'd guess that emphasis on research will be a lot more important because of the increase in costs, and that it will be more important early on to raise the luxury rate, since I'm pretty sure you won't advise more police units that under a Republic cannot police anyway and will cost extra.
It is a huge map with max random opponents. I definitely see what you mean about expanding as far as one can without warfare. How would you define the end of the settling phase? My natural definition would say that it was when one no longer had open contiguous land to settle, but that might be too simplistic.
Is spending money on settlers as simple as rush building them? So if I am doing that, building settlers as fast as I can until I've platted out all my land, and end up with a bunch of ungarrisoned small towns without road connections for a while, that's okay and I should not think that I will get overrun, or lose a couple frontier cities to barbs?
It's never occurred to me that I should ever leave any city ungarrisoned, which would result if one had only 9 military on 10 towns; wouldn't they see my weakness and jump on me rapidly? Is there a grace period where I can be almost positive the AI won't attack me 'just because?'
I am pretty sure that was a save where the AI was proposing wonders I didn't plan to stay on, so at least you can have faith that I changed those when I brought the game up again.
650 must be just about when I had recently got Republic.
So at this point one of the main flaws is that instead of settlers and then workers, I'm building other stuff? I had reckoned workers also would count toward the Republic's military limit but maybe they don't.
I was concerned about the floodplain cities that they'd have megatons of food, but not enough shields to build settlers fast enough to take the pressure off.
So you are saying that I'm coming out okay enough to move up a level in difficulty in spite of my systemic missteps? (That could sound like I were pouting, but I'm not, just summarizing as I see it and absorbing it.) In that scenario, I'd guess that emphasis on research will be a lot more important because of the increase in costs, and that it will be more important early on to raise the luxury rate, since I'm pretty sure you won't advise more police units that under a Republic cannot police anyway and will cost extra.
It is a huge map with max random opponents. I definitely see what you mean about expanding as far as one can without warfare. How would you define the end of the settling phase? My natural definition would say that it was when one no longer had open contiguous land to settle, but that might be too simplistic.
Is spending money on settlers as simple as rush building them? So if I am doing that, building settlers as fast as I can until I've platted out all my land, and end up with a bunch of ungarrisoned small towns without road connections for a while, that's okay and I should not think that I will get overrun, or lose a couple frontier cities to barbs?
No grace period. I had been elimnated before i could even build any military.
There is some risk involved, and if you should switch to emperor or higher the risk may become substantial. At lower settings it is low. AI is eager to attack once it runs out of space. The thing is that usualy it is not economically to deter beyond need. Often it may be economically to let AI do you the favour of decaring war onto you. This creates war happynes.
The Pyramids were at almost 10 shields. I was about the last turn when switching to worker could have be done lossless.
Absolutely. Early on expansion is king.
Unit support counts for workers and settlers aswell. Exceeding free unit support is normal as an early republic.
With those flaws you may or may not stand a chance at emperor. I donnot know that. But if you only overcome half of them you should stand a fair chance at emperor.
It may be convenient to use warriors as military police so you reach republic soon, but disband some once you are a republic.
That will always depend on circumstances and it will always be a process, not just one point in time. When you cannot take any more land without aggresive tactics the settling phase is over.
More or less. Rushing settliers may be limited by food. Also using workers may help to get settlers faster to destination and you should have some military, the borders may better have some protection.
Barbs do little harm to cities. You keep them after being raided.
vorlon_mi
Emperor
After the switch to republic, move your garrisons to your outermost cities: along a coast, or along the frontier with your neighbor. Barbs can't be generated inside territory you control; they spawn out in the "fog of war." Thus interior cities are only in danger from aggressive neighbors.
In the game I was playing last night, I kept losing workers to barbs. The barb horsemen had spawned out in the hills, and swooped in while my unprotected workers were building roads around a frontier city.
When a couple attacked my frontier city, they defeated my garrison of one unit, stole some gold, but left the city standing.
In the game I was playing last night, I kept losing workers to barbs. The barb horsemen had spawned out in the hills, and swooped in while my unprotected workers were building roads around a frontier city.
When a couple attacked my frontier city, they defeated my garrison of one unit, stole some gold, but left the city standing.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
A human probably would, if you were playing an online MP game, but the AI won't: the AICivs (and your own military advisor, who uses the same algorithm) don't rate your military strength by 'how many garrisoned troops per city?', they basically total up all your current units' current A- and D-values (also including minor modifications for fortification bonuses, total HPs, etc.), and compare that number with their own units' totals. If TheirTotal >> YourTotal, i.e. they rate you as 'weak', they are more likely to DoW you (especially e.g. if you provoke them by trying to evict them). For the purposes of the mil-strength calculation, A-values are also counted as being worth ~1.5x their actual value, which is why running a military composed primarily of 'defensive' units (i.e. low-A, high-D) is a 'good' way to invite an attack.
And under Republic you have no MP, and high maintenance costs for excess units. So as an early Republic, so long as you don't sign RoPs with your immediate neighbours, you can quite safely use the 'hard shell/ soft centre' troop-distribution described by Vorlon_Mi, to maximise your ability to repel invaders while minimising your military support costs -- at least until the AI gets M=3 units (e.g. Chinese Riders, or Cavs), at which point you may also need defenders in your 2nd-line cities (especially if you've used 'tight' CxxC city-placement).
Under Republic, your increased income can (if necessary) buy the needed shields when the city gets close to rioting due to overpopulation; although spending gold like this this is not advisable if you can avoid it, Floodplain-cities are a special case.
Micromanagement will almost always be a better option though: if your current LUX%+Luxes can only sustain a certain pop-level in your Settler-building Floodplain-town(s) (say, Pop6, because at Pop7+ it will riot) then you should aim to reach that level ASAP, then shift tile usage to increase shield-output (and decrease food-harvest) so as to match the remaining Settler build-time to the growth-time. On the interturn, commerce/happiness is calculated first, then food/growth, then shields/production, so the city will grow and then immediately shrink again, without rioting. As soon as the Pop drops, send enough citizens back to the high-food (low-shield) tiles to grow the town back to max. sustainable size in the minimum time (ideally without food-wastage). If you can't match the build- and growth times exactly, it may be better to have the build complete just before the growth (especially at Pop6-7), so that the food box starts the post-build turn at (nearly) full; that way, you also get some shields into the box over the next growth-IBT.
If you already have too many people to keep happy, and need to stave off a riot, or prevent further growth, just make the unhappy citizen(s) into a Scientist for the first part of the interturn before the Settler gets completed. That way you get some beakers out of them, and the city drops to a more manageable size. If the unhappiness-problem is more widespread, up the LUX%-rate a notch.
If you can 'beat' Regent already (1st in most/all demographics says you can), then yes, up your game. A Monarch-level AICiv's not significantly different to a Regent-level AICiv, so you should find Emp winnable (if not every game!
). An Emp-level AICiv's build/research advantage is now noticeable (20% discount -- so e.g. an Archer costs them 16s vs. your 20s), but still not yet significant in the early game, due to the AI's inability to manage wastage/ overruns on smaller builds (e.g. it will happily build that 16s-Archer in 3T at 7SPT, wasting 5s and negating its discount). Emp-level AICivs also do not get large numbers of starting units (1 offensive, 4 defensive, 2 Workers) and still only get 1 Settler (they get 2 Settlers at DG, which makes an increasingly large difference to the early game at smaller map-sizes, i.e. where a single town takes up a greater proportion of the total settle-able space).
If you habitually play on Huge maps, that will be a far bigger factor for your turns-to-tech than the increased difficulty/ AI's research discount (especially under an early Republic, before you have many cities down). In the early game, commerce/research is limited by the fact that (regardless of mapsize), it takes a more-or-less 'fixed' amount of time to build X Settlers. On a Huge map, you need a bigger value of X to cover 'your' territory, and hence it takes that much longer to get your cities down and developed to the point where your total beaker-output per turn becomes comparable to the increased tech costs on Huge maps.
You will almost certainly find that you need to do (a lot) more tech-trading at Emp, especially on Huge maps: At Regent, even an early Human Republic can still research quicker than the AIs, so you find yourself going through the Middle-Age tree well ahead of them. At Emp, they get teched-up 20% faster -- but still not so fast that the Republic-slingshot isn't viable any more, so if you get it, you can usually pick up almost everything else in trade for the CoL/ Philo/ Rep triumvirate.
Yup. But ideally, under Republic, use your free-unit limit to cover your military (50 cities at Pop7+ = 150 free units!) and foreign income rather than TAX% to maintain your buildings (which should be limited to game-aims, at least at first). Aim also to obtain Luxes ASAP -- 3-4 Luxes should be enough to keep an Emp-level Pop7 city happy under Republic at LUX%=10-20%, with the rest going into SCI%. Be careful of making per-turn trades though, e.g. only sell excess Luxes to your neighbours for GPT if you can be sure of maintaining the trade route(s) for the requisite 20T.
Yes. While those outlying towns are still small/ undeveloped/ (nearly) ungarrisoned, losing them to AI-aggression is much less wasteful of your output than if they fall after you've built/rushed (expensive) units/ improvements in them. And if the loss happens before they've reached Pop2 and/or popped their border, they'll get auto-razed, so the attacking AICiv will gain nothing (while Barbs are annoying, they don't capture cities). Culture-flips are a pain though, because the AICiv then gets to keep the town.
As for the garrison and roads, in my games, a Warrior and/or a Worker are frequently the first 2 projects for a new town: the Worker's first job will then be to road the shortest-but most-immediately-useful (flatland-)route back towards the nearest older town which is already connected to my trade-network (hence supplying Resources and Luxes, and possibly also reducing corruption). The Warrior (if built) will then be sent to nearest Rax-town for upgrading, while a better unit(s) moves to garrison the new town.
As i recall it weakly garrisoned (border) towns can lure AI to attack. Especially the combination of railroads and RoP is known to be tricky.
Well, units fortified in cities usually get 85% or 125% Bonus on Defence. That would outweight the attack value "bias".
That is only needed for the amount of unhappy citizens that exceed the amount of happy ones.
Moving backwards may be inconvenient. Moving fowards helps settlers to reach target faster. Each settler contains 2 citizens that could use tiles in the centre and a new founded town will also use 2 tiles, one of them being the city tile. Settlers should settle, they are not meant to spend many turns in existence.
You would not need that many workers @ Regent level.
You would not need 57 cities. If there's space after the second ring then fine, fill the space, but there's no huge race for city numbers, just for resource/luxury/strategic locations. Let the AI munch up the rubbish land and waste time building settlers while you maximise science and get quickly to Knights - who can then start taking cities for you (if you're doing conquest, if peaceful then Knights are a great defence force).
